A Georgia Supreme Court justice has struck down a state law banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy, ruling it unconstitutional and saying it can’t be enforced.   

  Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney’s ruling makes the procedure legal again in the state until at least 20 weeks into pregnancy, effective immediately.  The judge’s order comes in response to a lawsuit that sought to lift the ban on multiple grounds and would apply statewide.   

  HB481, called Georgia’s LIFE Act, bans, with certain exceptions, abortion when early heart activity is detected – as early as six weeks into pregnancy, when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.   

  The lawsuit was filed by the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a group that seeks to “empower and amplify the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice,” according to the group’s website.   

  “After a long road, we are finally able to celebrate the end of an extreme abortion ban in our state,” Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, said in a statement, adding, “While we applaud the end of a ban that has overwhelmed white supremacy, it shouldn’t have existed in the first place.  Now, it is time to move forward with a vision for Georgia that establishes full bodily autonomy and liberation for our communities.  ”   

  In his opinion, McBurney wrote that when Georgia lawmakers passed the bill and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed it in 2019, “the supreme law of this land was unquestionably — and has been for nearly half a century — that laws unduly restrict abortion before viability were unconstitutional.”   

  Because the right to abortion before viability existed nationwide when the law was enacted, Georgia could not legally limit it at the time, he wrote.   

  The state has filed an appeal, according to a Kemp spokesman.   

  “Today’s decision places a judge’s personal beliefs above the will of the legislature and the people of Georgia,” the spokesman said.   

  When he approved the measure in 2019, Kemp had said: “I realize some people might challenge it in court.  But our job is to do what is right, not what is easy.  We are called to be strong and courageous and we will not back down.  We will always continue to fight for life.”   

  State Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, “will continue to fulfill our duty to defend our state’s laws in court,” his spokeswoman, Kara Richardson, said in an email.   

  McBurney wrote in his opinion that portions of the legislation “were clearly unconstitutional when drafted, passed and enacted.”   

  “…[E]everywhere in America, including Georgia, it has been categorically unconstitutional for governments – federal, state or local – to ban abortion before viability,” he wrote, adding that “if the courts have spoken, clearly and directly, about who is the law, as to what is and is not constitutional, legislators and legislators are not at liberty to pass laws contrary to such declarations.”   

  While signed into law in 2019, the legislation was blocked from taking effect until this summer.  After the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which overturned Roe v. Wade, declaring that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to abortion — Georgia’s ban remained on hold for several weeks until a federal appeals court allowed the law to be implemented immediately.   

  McBurney wrote that lawmakers might pass similar legislation in light of the Dobbs decision, but they would first have to deal with the “sharp glare of public attention that will undoubtedly and rightly follow such an important and consequential debate if the rights of unborn children justify such a restriction of women’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy.”   

  This story has been updated with additional details.