Georgia Supreme Court upholds six-week abortion ban

The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday deemed the Peach State's six-week "heartbeat" abortion ban constitutional, kicking a challenge to the law back to the lower court for further argument.

The Tuesday 6-1 decision overturned the lower court ruling striking down the ban, though pro-abortion plaintiffs will again be able to make arguments at that level, according to The Hill. The ban will remain in effect amid the subsequent proceedings.

The lower court had determined that the state's ban, enacted in 2019, was unconstitutional at that time, because the Supreme Court had not yet overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent that established the constitutional right to an abortion. The court in 2022 ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson that the constitution conferred no such right.

"The holdings of United States Supreme Court cases interpreting the United States Constitution that have since been overruled cannot establish that a law was unconstitutional when enacted," Justice Verda Colvin wrote in the Tuesday decision. "Because Dobbs is controlling precedent on whether the United States Constitution confers a right to abortion, and because the parties and the trial court do not dispute that the LIFE Act complies with Dobbs, it follows that the LIFE Act did not violate the United States Constitution when enacted in 2019."

The state's six-week ban is one of the more permissive abortion bans in the region. While Florida and South Carolina also enacted six-week bans and North Carolina set the cutoff at 12 weeks, most southern states have opted for near-total bans, with varying exceptions for rape, incest, or medical concerns.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.