Judge overturns Georgia's ban on abortion around 6 weeks

ATLANTA (AP) — A judge overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling Tuesday that it violated the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent when it was enacted and was therefore void.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney's ruling took effect immediately statewide, though the state attorney general's office said it planned to appeal. The ban had been in effect since July.

It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many women knew they were pregnant.

McBurney’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in July by doctors and advocacy groups that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia Constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state. McBurney did not rule on that claim.

Instead, his decision agreed with a different argument made in the lawsuit — that the ban was invalid because it violated the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court precedent at the time it became law.

Kara Richardson, a spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, said in an email that the office intends to pursue an “immediate appeal.”

Georgia’s law was passed by state lawmakers and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019 but had been blocked from taking effect until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had protected the right to an abortion for nearly 50 years.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Georgia to begin enforcing its abortion law just over...