ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court will soon decide whether the abortion law the Legislature passed in 2019 should remain in effect — or if, as attorneys for abortion providers argued Tuesday, it was illegal from the start.
In 2019, Georgia passed a law that bans most abortions once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.
Attorneys representing abortion rights activists and providers, argued that when the law passed in 2019, Roe v. Wade was the law of the land and the state constitution does not allow the Legislature to enact statutes that violate the law, which lawyers call “void ab initio.” The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling, which guaranteed a right to an abortion until a fetus was viable outside the mother’s body, was overturned last summer.
