State Abortion Ban Challenged in Federal Court
On October 24, the Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective v. State of Georgia non-jury trial began in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia. It is the first full trial to challenge the legitimacy of state abortion bans that have been instituted post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overruled Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
The ban in question is the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act. While it was previously blocked by a federal judge in 2019 as it violated Roe, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals promptly reversed the lower court’s injunction in July 2022 to allow for the ban to immediately take effect after Roe’s reversal through Dobbs. Informally known as the Heartbeat Bill, the law extends “full legal recognition to an unborn child” and bans all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, with exceptions for reported rape and to save the mother’s life.
The plaintiffs—the Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Planned Parenthood, who issued the challenge against the ban—stated that the law violates state constitutional protections of liberty and privacy. An additional argument was that the 2019 law was “void ab initio,” or invalid as the right to abortion was protected and recognized under Roe at the time it passed, and that the overturning of Roe could not revive a law that was void.
The Georgia Solicitor General argued in favor of the state’s interest in unborn children and that “there’s nothing that even hints at a right to abortion under Georgia’s constitution.”
