The news: A federal appeals court ruled that Georgia’s restrictive abortion law should be allowed to take effect.
What this means: The outcome has been expected since the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years. Currently, Georgia law allows abortions through 20 weeks from conception. Once the new law takes effect, which could be in days or weeks, most abortions will no longer be allowed once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically around six weeks of pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant.
What happened: In July 2020, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones struck down the stricter law, leading to the appeal. At the time, Jones found the law violated a woman’s right to an abortion as established by the precedent set in Roe v. Wade. The three-judge panel at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta put the case on hold in September, deciding to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs case out of Mississippi.
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