[US] Supreme Court Declines To Hear Case Involving Georgia Law Banning Abortions After Fetal Heartbeat is Detectable

A federal appeals court upheld Georgia’s 2019 law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable just months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.<br><br>The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upholding a Georgia law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detectable months after the high court overturned Roe v. Wade.<br><br>The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022, in which it overturned the constitutional right to abortion previously recognized and ruled that the decision of whether abortion should be legal or illegal should be regulated at the state level instead.<br><br>In its 6-3 decision, the court upheld a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy as well as a Texas law banning abortions after a heartbeat is detected.<br><br>State lawmakers in Georgia enacted a law in the spring of 2019 that banned abortions after fetal cardiac activity could be detected, which is typically around 6 weeks of pregnancy. That law was blocked by the district court in October 2019.<br><br>The decision was appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which in 2020 affirmed the district court's decision. “We cannot ignore the inescapable fact that Georgia’s abortion ban, like Georgia’s historical anti-abortion statutes, was enacted by white lawmakers animated by a desire to control bodies andfamily formation of Black people and other minority groups,” the Eleventh Circuit said.<br><br>The Supreme Court lifted the lower court’s injunction in Dobbs and allowed Georgia’s “heartbeat” abortion ban to take effect in July 2022, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.<br><br>However, in October 2022, a Fulton County Superior Court judge prevailed in a lawsuit challenging the Georgia law, ruling that it violated the state’s Constitution. The ruling lifted the ban. Georgia’s abortion ban was blocked again by a federal appeals court in August after the state had asked the court to revive the law.<br><br>In a 2-1 decision issued Wednesday, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the Georgia law was constitutional, sending state Democrats into a panic.<br><br>The Supreme Court declined to hear the challenge to that ruling on Monday.<br><br>Georgia’s heartbeat law bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected but provides some exceptions. The law allows exceptions for women who become pregnant through rape or incest, though those women must file a police report and sworn statement to qualify for the exemption. The law also allows exceptions in cases where an abortion is needed to save a woman’s life, to remove a fetus that cannot survive or in cases where a woman’s pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.<br><br>Under the law, a doctor performing an abortion outside those exceptions is guilty of aggravated assault and could face up to 10 years in prison.<br><br>In addition to criminalizing abortions, the law provides a legal pathway for a man who has raped an embryo to sue over an abortion, such as a civil lawsuit to obtain damages. The law gives priority to women who are victims of rape or incest, allowing them to file a civil lawsuit seeking damages. <br><br>Women who are raped but did not file a police report still have to carry out the pregnancy, the Associated Press reported.<br><br>The law also allows people to sue abortion providers over an embryo they had no knowledge was conceived without their consent, such as a husband who did not know about a wife’s abortion.