A court in Georgia has struck down a state law known as the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, a euphemistically named piece of legislation that bans abortion once a heartbeat is detected in an embryo, something that is often pegged around six weeks into a pregnancy (though medical experts note these electrical pulses aren’t really a heartbeat).
It’s possible to be pregnant and not even know it at six weeks, so this law is extremely restrictive. And, like the anti-abortion measures that have passed in other states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, its tenets reflect theology, not science or concern for the well-being of people.
Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County ruled that the ban violates residents’ constitutional rights, asserting, “An arbitrary six-week ban on (post-embryonic cardiac activity pregnancy) terminations is inconsistent with these rights and the proper balance that a viability rule establishes between a woman’s rights of liberty and privacy and society’s interest in protecting and caring for unborn infants.”
But McBurney added another passage that deserves attention. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have,” he wrote. “For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability. It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could – or should – force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another…”
The reference to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is spot on – and an indication that this judge gets why abortion bans are just below the surface, an attempt by Christian Nationalists to force their religious beliefs on everyone.
My colleague Liz Hayes reports in this month’s issue of Church & State that voters in 10 states – Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota – will face ballot referenda dealing with reproductive rights. These voters will have the opportunity to protect reproductive rights, as voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont have already done. They should take it.
Unfortunately, Georgia has no mechanism by which citizens can put initiative questions on the ballot. Residents there will have to find other ways to defend reproductive freedom. Otherwise, the “commanders” of Christian Nationalism will continue drafting theocratic laws and compelling all to follow them.
