The Georgia Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Feb. 20 to uphold the state’s six-week abortion ban for a second time.

Georgia’s high court vacated a lower judge’s attempt to render the “Heartbeat Law” unconstitutional and ordered that judge to reassess whether the abortion activists who filed the suit have legal standing to do so. Georgia’s “Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act,” or LIFE Act, continues to protect unborn babies with a “detectable human heartbeat.”

According to the ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney must reconsider whether the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a national abortion activist group headquartered in Atlanta, has standing to challenge the law in light of another recent Georgia Supreme Court decision.

In Wasserman v. Franklin County, the state’s high court eliminated third-party standing in Georgia courts.The court noted that a plaintiff may not sue in Georgia courts by just merely asserting the rights of a third party but must assert his or her own rights to be able to sue.

In October 2023, McBurney first ruled that Georgia’s 2019 LIFE Act was invalid because it was enacted under the binding precedent of Roe v. Wade, which had conferred a national right to abortion in the first trimester. But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 2019 law was allowed to take effect.

McBurney’s 2023 lower court ruling determined that an unconstitutional law can’t stand even if it becomes constitutional later. The Georgia Supreme Court quickly overruled McBurney 6-1, writing that the U.S. Constitution has a “fixed meaning” and the 2022 Dobbs decision rescinded the “egregiously wrong” Roe decision and is now the controlling precedent.

Georgia’s high court then sent the case back to McBurney to consider the merits of other legal arguments against the law. In September 2024, McBurney again agreed with pro-abortion advocates while ruling that the LIFE Act violates due process and equal protection rights by infringing on a person’s privacy and autonomy. The Georgia Supreme Court, however, did not rule on those merits when it vacated McBurney’s most recent decision while deciding only to focus on the issue of standing.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the law firm Liberty Counsel, commended Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. “Georgia’s ‘heartbeat law’ protects the most vulnerable and there is nothing unconstitutional about that,” Staver said. “There is no right to cruelly kill defenseless children in the womb. Abortion harms women physically and emotionally and kills defenseless children in the womb. Abortion is also a tool of modern-day eugenics rooted in racism to eliminate certain races and people. Georgia’s abortion ban protects countless women and innocent unborn lives.”

Three other states have six-week “heartbeat” laws, including Florida, Iowa and South Carolina, which all have been upheld by their respective state supreme courts.

Photo: Jonathan Sanchez/unsplash.com