‘Horrific’ Georgia Abortion Ban Goes Into Effect After Unusual Court Ruling
The law bans abortions after six weeks and encourages patients to rat out their own abortion providers.
AbortionPolitics

Georgia’s six-week abortion ban and fetal personhood bill has gone into effect as of Wednesday, July 20, after an unusual ruling issued by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals this afternoon. Instead of giving a 28-day grace period, as expected, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an immediate stay of the lower court’s injunction against the bill. No one asked the court to do this; it acted on its own accord. Considering the opinion’s author, Chief Judge William Pryor, called the plaintiffs and appellees “abortionists” at least 21 times in the opinion, it’s not hard to believe.
Pro-abortion legal organizations fighting the bill released a joint statement on Wednesday. “This is a highly unorthodox action that will immediately push essential abortion care out of reach for patients beyond the earliest stages of pregnancy. Across the state, providers are now being forced to turn away patients who thought they would be able to access abortion, immediately changing the course of their lives and futures. This is horrific. We’ll continue doing everything in our power to fight for abortion access in Georgia in the face of these harmful attacks on people’s ability to control if and when to have a child,” American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia, Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Southeast, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a statement.