US state of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban reinstated by court

Unborn babies in the US state of Georgia will once again be protected from the moment a heartbeat can be detected – at approximately six weeks.

Earlier this month a lower court blocked Georgia’s ‘Heartbeat Act’ which came into effect in July following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade and let individual states determine their own abortion law.

But the state’s Supreme Court has now reinstated the protections, unanimously overturning the lower court’s ruling.

Protect the unborn

The Fulton County Court overturned the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, claiming that it was void under Georgia law because it was passed when Roe v Wade was still in effect.

However, state lawyers appealed to Georgia’s Supreme Court arguing that the lower court’s injunction was invalid.

The ruling meant that abortion providers had to immediately stop aborting babies with detectable heartbeats.

Lives saved

Recent data suggest that at least ten thousand lives have been saved from abortion since Roe v Wade was overturned in June.

According to #WeCount, a pro-abortion Society of Family Planning venture, there were an estimated 10,670 fewer abortions in the two months following the US Supreme Court judgment.

#WeCount calculated the total figure based on statistics sent in by clinics responsible for approximately 82 per cent of all abortions carried out in the US.

Increased safeguards

States that had increased safeguards for the unborn saw numbers fall from “8,500 abortions in April, before the decision, to 460 abortions in August 2022”, it reported.

In Texas, the study said, “by August the monthly estimated number of abortions provided by a clinician declined to approximately 10”.

Commenting on the report, the President of Students for Life of America, Kristan Hawkins, said: “We are celebrating the fact that at least 10,000 babies have a chance at life.”

Welcoming the Roe v Wade ruling in June, the CI’s Deputy Director Ciarán Kelly said: “In the generations to come there’ll be hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, that look back and realise that they owe their lives to this moment”.