Georgia Supreme Court allows abortion law to stand. What’s next?

The Georgia State Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the state’s restrictive abortion law would remain in effect, overturning a lower court decision and sending the case back to a Fulton Superior Court judge.

Last year, Fulton Superior Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Georgia’s 2019 abortion statute, which bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, was passed illegally since Roe v. Wade was the law of the land at the time. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which allowed abortions up until a fetus could be viable outside the mother’s body.

With the state Supreme Court order disagreeing with the superior court ruling, McBurney will now have to rule on the constitutionality of other arguments made during last year’s hearing. Abortion rights advocates and providers argued that the law violates the state constitution’s right to privacy, which they said grants more expansive privacy rights than the U.S. Constitution. State lawyers contended the law should remain in effect because “abortion always harms a third party,” the embryo or fetus.