A (13:53)
Yeah, it's bullshit. All right, next up from me at Mueller, she wrote.com Today, a Fulton county judge struck down Georgia's six week abortion ban as unconstitutional. And it's full of incredible quotes up to and including the invocation of the Handmaid's Tale. But before I dive into some of the content, let's review how we got to this point. The plaintiffs in the case are suing to block certain provisions of Georgia's Living Infants fairness and Equality act, also known as the Life act, arguing that they're unconstitutional. In October of 2022, the court conducted a bench trial with no jury, during which the parties presented evidence in support of their positions. Now, at the time pending at the time of that bench trial were two motions, A motion to dismiss filed by the state of Georgia and a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings filed by the plaintiffs. On 15th November, 2022, the court entered an order granting, in part, the motion for partial judgment on the pleadings for the plaintiffs, finding that several challenged provisions of the LIFE act were void because they were unconstitutional when passed. The state then promptly appealed, and the Supreme Court stayed this court's ruling while it considered the merits of the void. Then, on October 24, 2023, the Supreme Court issued its final opinion in which it reversed this court's ruling, abandoning decades of its own precedent, and remanded the case for a ruling on the merits of the plaintiff's constitutional claims. And that's what led to today's ruling. The Life act consists of 16 sections, only, three of which the plaintiffs challenge as infringing on their rights or their members rights. Sections 4, 10 and 11 Section 4 of the Life act amended a Georgia law to criminalize abortions occurring after the embryo generates a detected human heartbeat, a development which both sides in this litigation agree typically occurs around six weeks after the mother's last menstrual period. Section 10amended the law concerning a physician's obligations when performing abortions to require doctors to make, quote, a determination of the presence of a detectable human heartbeat of an unborn child. That's a quote before performing any abortion absent a medical emergency or a medically futile pregnancy. And finally, Section 11amended the law to add a requirement 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 by section 4 of the act that applied to justify the otherwise illegal procedure. Now here's how Judge McBurney frames the issue. Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy or even equal protection, this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body. The baseline rule is clear. A legally competent person has absolute authority over her body and should brook no government interference in what she does and does not do in terms of health, hygiene and the like. Now there is a vaccine exception wherein the government can condition some receipt of benefits such as public education or Medicare or Medicaid coverage based on the administration of vaccines or other preventative medicine, or outright mandate the treatment through a valid exercise of state police power, goes on to say, and the issue to be decided here, how to balance the rights of a not yet viable fetus against the rights of the only person in this great wide world who can, by choice or by legislative imposition, maintain that pregnancy until it's viable. And Judge McBurney writes, While the state's interest in protecting unborn life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the state and not solely by the woman compelled by the act to do the state's work, the balance of rights favors the woman. 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, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not yet viable fetus may have. And here's where he invokes the Handmaid's Tale for these women, 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 outside the womb, any more so than society could or should force them to serve as a human tissue bank or give up a kidney for the benefit of another. Considering the compelling record of evidence about the physical, mental, and emotional impact of unwanted pregnancies on the women who are forced by law to carry them to term as well as on their other living children, 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. When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then and only then should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what's growing within it. He then addresses mental health issues. He says, 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. And, he concludes, a review of our higher court's interpretations of liberty demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices. Accordingly, section 4 of the Life act is declared unconstitutional. The state and all of its agents to include any county, municipal, or other local authority, are once again enjoined from seeking to enforce in any manner the LIFE Act's PCAP termination ban in Georgia. And because Section 4 is stricken and thus its amendments to the law are gone, section 11 necessarily fails as well as a woman does not require a legislatively bestowed exception to pursue a pre viability termination. And finally the other law that they wanted to overturn is declared unconstitutional. It too shall not be enforced by the state or any of its agents. Now how this ruling plays with the Georgia Supreme Court is another matter. Professor Anthony Michael Kreis said that it does fail to center legal history and the evolution of common law in its analysis, which is going to be a real missed opportunity and a limitation of its reach on appeal. So we'll see how it does.
