ATLANTA — The Supreme Court of Georgia is about to announce its decision on Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat” abortion law.
It’s one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation.
And at 9 a.m. Tuesday, the state Supreme Court will release its ruling-- either throwing out the law or keeping it on the books.
As it is, the law currently bans most abortions in Georgia as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected, often at six weeks— and often before some even know they’re pregnant.
The decision by the state Supreme Court is final, there is no appeal.
So each side in this case is already expecting that the losing side will find a way to keep fighting.
A key question the state Supreme Court will answer has less to do with whether it’s right or wrong to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
Instead, a big part of the court’s is whether the ban was already unconstitutional from the moment the Governor signed it into law in 2019.
That’s because back then, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, supposedly preventing states like Georgia from enacting laws like the heartbeat abortion ban in the first place.
Last year, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled the ban should never have been enacted.
The state appealed McBurney’s ruling, to try to keep the ban in place, and the state Supreme Court conducted a hearing in March 2023.
Stephen Petrany, the Georgia Solicitor General, argued the ban should stay in place.
“If a law is, in fact, unconstitutional when enacted, then sure, it’s void for all time. That’s fine,” Petrany told the justices. “Our point is that this law was not, in fact, void, unconstitutional, anything, when it was enacted.”
Atlanta attorney Julia Stone argued for SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which had sued to try to overturn the ban.
“Had this court case been brought in 2019, this court would have had no choice but to strike it down as void,” Stone said at the hearing. “And voidness is not something that can change over time.”
Sen. Ed Setzler, (R ) Cobb County, was a state Representative in 2019 who authored the law and convinced the legislature to disregard Roe v. Wade and pass the statewide ban anyway.
After the state Supreme Court hearing in March, Setzler told reporters he was optimistic.
“I think the court is going to find this is fully Constitutional,” Setzler said. “I think it’s going to be implemented in full.”
Opponents of the ban, including Monica Simpson of SisterSong Women of Color, were already preparing to keep fighting if the state Supreme Court keeps the ban in place.
“We are committed to our fight,” Simpson told reporters after the hearing in March. “We are committed to reproductive justice. And we will continue to do everything that we need to do to ensure that Georgians are taken care of.”
If the state Supreme Court throws out the ban, it is possible that state legislators will start all over, and try to pass another version of the ban when they convene at the State Capitol in January 2024.