What’s next as Georgia’s 2019 abortion law takes effect
An 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling has set Georgia’s restrictive 2019 abortion law to take effect.
The state’s previous abortion policy allowed for termination 20 to 22 weeks into pregnancy, while the recent ruling bans abortion upon detection of cardiac activity, around six weeks after conception. Exceptions under the “Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act” will be made only during medical emergencies or under circumstances of police-reported rape and incest. The Dobbs ruling, which provided decision-making freedom on abortion back to the states, has exacerbated the gravity of state and city-level lawmakers’ rulings. The matter is set to become a major issue in Georgia’s November election.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp expressed satisfaction with the restriction enactment. “As mothers navigate pregnancy, birth, parenthood or alternative options to parenthood like adoption, Georgia’s public, private and nonprofit sectors stand ready to provide the resources they need to be safe, healthy and informed,” he said on Thursday afternoon, outside of the state Capitol.
While the willingness of lawmakers to enact a total ban is uncertain, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker is among the contingency of lawmakers angling to remove protections that provide exceptions for medical emergencies, rape, or incest.
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams expressed outrage with the passing of the law. “This law is permanent. Unless we have new leadership, this law will govern their lives, the lives of their daughters, the lives of their friends. The economy can change but this law becomes the law of the land.” She continued, “I would say to balance whether your immediate concerns about money outweigh your concerns about your constitutional protected rights.”
Rural African-American women have significantly higher maternal mortality rates than white and urban communities.
Republican state Rep. Ed Setzler, lead sponsor of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, described the ruling as an end to what he called, “50 years of the violence of abortion.” On Thursday’s edition of “Closer Look,” Setzler claimed the steps taken by the Kemp administration and the passing of the law are sufficiently equitable actions, citing telemedicine as an option for “meaningful care” in low-income and rural areas with limited or no access to OB-GYN services.
Georgia State University Law Professor Tanya Washington described the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling as, “entirely expected in the wake of the Dobbs decision overruling both [Roe v. Wade] and [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey]. … Once those cases were overturned, this outcome was entirely foreseeable,” she explained on Thursday’s edition of “Closer Look.”
The law assigns the term “abortionist” to abortion rights advocates. The written language also emphasizes an attachment of personhood to in-utero embryos and fetuses, providing them with an unprecedented array of rights.
Washington emphasized the far-reaching, collateral consequences and applications of the law’s passing.
“Even if adoption or foster care is the solution being presented by the governor and others, our child welfare system is already overwhelmed and under-resourced,” she said. “We’re not taking care of the pregnant mothers and the children who are being born in the state of Georgia. The promise that [the state] will provide greater resources is a promise that should have been made manifest before they put additional stress on our fiscal and political systems.”
Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, was stunned by the court’s immediate vacation of the injunction.
“Typically they would have sent it back to the district court and we would have had opportunity to prepare,” she explained on “Closer Look.” “When this injunction was lifted, people had appointments scheduled. There were probably people in clinics, in mid-conversation with clinicians.”
Young believes the language of the law is derogatory and intentionally prejudicial and is consistent with the activism born from the Trump administration’s judicial appointments, explaining that women and pregnant people in Georgia are going to begin to experience unwanted, state-sanctioned pregnancy. They have lost the right to decide when and with whom they have a family, she said.
The passing of Roe v. Wade in 1973 led to an increase in the enrollment of women in college and professional positions. ACLU polling shows the majority of Georgians are unsupportive of the legislation passed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The organization has set out to educate the public on practicing informed citizenship.
“There’s been so little attention — including when they were discussing this bill — about the impact on women’s lived experiences,” Young shared. “We’re going to see women suffer with miscarriage [and] damages to their health. We’re going to see women and girls dropping out of school and college. Women and their partners who are denied abortions are more likely to live in poverty, as are their children. We will only begin to understand the suffering it will cause.”
Young said that people in Georgia are not receiving sufficient support from the state, and thousands lack access to comprehensive health coverage. The burden of abortion restriction will fall the hardest on poor, rural, people of color and those least able to navigate child care, she said.
“We are not caring for women and children in the state,” Young said. “To pretend something is going to change now is not believable.”
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