Georgia Supreme Court Temporarily Reinstates Near-Total Abortion Ban

The reinstatement comes a week after a judge found the ban treated women like "some piece of collectively owned community property."

A week after a judge struck down Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, the state’s Supreme Court announced Monday that it’s reinstating the ban while it weighs Georgia officials’ appeal of the lower court’s ruling.

Following the high court’s 6-1 vote, the near-total ban on abortions will go back into effect at 5 p.m. local time on Monday, upending a major win for reproductive rights advocates.

“It is cruel that our patients’ ability to access the reproductive health care they need has been taken away yet again,” Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director at Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, said following the ruling. “Once again, we are being forced to turn away those in need of abortion care beyond six weeks of pregnancy and deny them care that we are fully capable of providing to change their lives.”

Justice John Ellington, the ruling’s sole dissenter, wrote in his dissent that the state should “not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution.”

Georgia’s six-week ban went into effect in July 2022, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.