Superior Court of Fulton County Judge Robert McBurneyPhoto from Superior Court of Fulton County website

ATLANTA — A Georgia judge has overruled a new Georgia law that prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected or near six weeks of pregnancy.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, in his Nov. 15 ruling, said two sections of the LIFE Act (or HB 481) are unconstitutional.

The law had been in limbo since shortly after its passage in 2019 due to court challenges; however, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s July vote to overturn Roe. v. Wade — ruling that abortion was not a federally protected right— a Georgia judge allowed the state’s law to take effect.

Subsequently, opponents of the law filed a new lawsuit, this time challenging its constitutionality under Georgia law.

At the time of the bill’s passage in 2019 before, McBurney said restricting abortion was unconstitutional.

“In other words, per controlling Georgia precedent, the proper legal milieu in which to assess the LIFE Act’s constitutionality is not our current post-Roe Dobbsian era but rather the legal environment that existed when H.B. 481 was enacted,” McBurney stated in the ruling. “At that time, the spring of 2019, everywhere in America, including Georgia, it was unequivocally unconstitutional for governments — federal, state, or local — to ban abortions before viability.”

McBurney also ruled that a section mandating that any physician who performs an abortion after detecting a fetal heartbeat must report to the Department of Public Health the exception to the ban imposed was also unconstitutional at the time HB 481 was signed into law. HB 481 included exceptions for rape or incest if a police report is filed and for medical emergencies when the mother’s life is at risk.

“Because, in the spring of 2019, criminalizing post-heartbeat but pre-viability abortions was unconstitutional, so too, was any requirement that medical providers somehow publicly justify their decision to comply with their patients’ wishes for a pre-viability procedure,” he said in the ruling.

He ultimately ruled that the Georgia law, approved along party lines by Republicans, is void and “must be re-enacted in our post-Roe world if they are to become the law of Georgia.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of anti-abortion group Students for Life Students for Life Action, spoke against the ruling.

“Throwing out a Georgia pro-life law by attaching it to a non-existent Constitutional hook is both offensive and legally unsound,” Hawkins said. “…Roe v. Wade is a house of legal cards that collapsed for the simple fact that abortion is found nowhere in our Constitution. Attacking preborn life with broken and rejected reasoning is activism and the act of a judge looking at political friends rather than the law.”

The ruling means for now, abortions are still legal after six weeks. Democrat state Sen. Elena Parent lauded the ruling on Twitter.

“Great news for women’s rights and all Georgians,” she said. “I’m sure the state will appeal it, but let’s bask in the glory of Judge McBurney’s intelligent ruling.”