Judge Throws Out Georgia's 6 Week Abortion Ban - This Isn't The Handmaid's Tale

A Republican-appointed judge just ruled that Republican legislators have no right to force women to be human incubators!

Hooray for Georgia judge Robert C.I McBurney who eviscerated Republicans, including Governor Brian Kemp, who steamrolled a 6 week abortion ban into law after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade in 2022.

Sadly, this ruling came two years too late to save the lives of Amber Thurman,28 and Candi Miller, 43, who both died after incomplete abortions. Thurman was denied lifesaving care at an Atlanta- area hospital until it was too late and Miller was too terrified of the law to even see a doctor as she suffered in excruciating pain.

McBurney was scathing in his ruling which concluded that the state’s strict 6 week ban with narrow exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life or major bodily function of the mother, violated the right to “liberty and privacy” that is guaranteed by the state’s Constitution.

The judge condemned Republicans for treating women as “human incubators” and scolded them for behaving like “a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale” in telling “these women what to do with their bodies.”

Thanks to McBurney abortion is now legal again up to 22 weeks in Georgia and - GOOD NEWS - Planned Parenthood has announced that its clinics in the state will now resume providing abortions.

Boy -do we ever need Judge Robert McBurney on the Supreme Court, rather than the gang of five who justified their decision to deprive women of the right to an abortion by quoting from a 17th Century jurist infamous for proclaiming that wives can never be raped by their husbands.

I want to just run some of McBurney’s most blistering words in the rulings here for you. His points are truly rays of 21st Century sunshine in this dark time for women’s reproductive freedom. They are proof that not all Republican - appointed judges are misogynist A - holes. Enjoy.

• “The LEAF Act ( which banned abortion in Georgia) criminalizes a woman’s deeply personal and private decision to end a pregnancy at a time

  when her fetus cannot enjoy any legislatively bestowed right to life independent of the woman carrying it.”

• “there is nothing narrow about a law so blunt that it forces a woman to allow

  a fetus grow inside her for months after she has made the difficult and deeply personal decision not to bring the pregnancy to term.”

• “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the

  disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy”

• “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”

• “ the Court finds that, until the pregnancy is viable, a woman’s right

  to make decisions about her body and her health remains private and protected, i.e., remains her business and her business alone.”

• “the LIFE Act allows for several exceptions to its ban on terminations; one of these is “medical emergencies. Specifically excluded from the definition of medical emergency are diagnoses of “mental or emotional” conditions, to include a diagnosis that the pregnant woman will engage in self-harm if forced to proceed with the pregnancy. “

• “A law that saves a mother from a potentially fatal pregnancy when the risk is purely physical but which fates her to death or serious injury or disability if the risk is “mental or emotional” is patently unconstitutional and violative of the equal protection rights of pregnant women suffering from acute mental health issues.”

Judge McBurney goes on to hammer Republican legislators for including in their abortion ban exceptions for rape and incest that could only be obtained if the victim filed an official police report.

He said: “ the victim of rape or incest need not share her trauma with the local sheriff, the chief of police, or anyone else should she seek to end her pregnancy before viability. Rather, it would be a decision left to the victim and her medical provider, just like any other important medical procedure the woman might seek: private and personal.”

Finally McBurney torches the legislators for trying to obtain the private medical records of any woman in the state who has had an abortion. He puts a an end to that crazy invasion of privacy.

WORD OF WARNING: Republican lawmakers in Georgia are no doubt seething that their control over the reproductive health of state’s women has ended. They will likely be appealing this ruling all the way to Georgia’s Supreme Court and potentially the Trump loving right wing - dominated Supreme Court. That means that the Georgia 6 week abortion ban could be re-imposed.

All the more reason for women to get out to vote for Democratic state legislators AND for Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot , who will protect the right for a woman to make her own reproductive health choices, not force her to be a “human incubator” against her will.