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Oct 24, 2023 · State of Georgia. ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling today that allows H.B. 481, a ban on abortion after approximately six weeks of pregnancy, to remain in effect. The court’s majority opinion disregards long-standing precedent that a law violating either the state or federal Constitution at the time of its enactment is ...
The ministers argued that Georgia unconstitutionally restricted their right to practice their profession and counsel in favor of abortion with their pregnant congregants, but the District Court ruled that only the pregnant woman had standing to challenge these statutes. Appeals to religious liberty to shore up the abortion right continued after ...
Jul 17, 2020 · For example, in 2019, Georgia legislators introduced HB 481, a bill that sought to outlaw abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected [ 10 ]. This bill aimed to restrict abortion as early as 6 weeks gestation, before many people know they are pregnant [ 11 ]—one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation [ 12 ].
- Jessica L. Dozier, Jessica L. Dozier, Monique Hennink, Elizabeth Mosley, Subasri Narasimhan, Johanna...
- 2020
- The Road to Roe
- Griswold v. Connecticut
- Eisenstadt v. Baird
- United States v. Vuitch
- The Parties to Roe
- The Lower Court
- The Roe v. Wade Oral Argument
- The Roe v. Wade Opinion
- Doe v. Bolton
Abortion was illegal in most states in the 1960s, often with no exceptions for cases of rape or threat to life. A pair of high-profile crises, however, shined a spotlight on the impact of these restrictions. Beginning in the late 1950s, thousands of babies were born with severe birth defects after their mothers took the morning sickness drug thalid...
While thalidomide and rubella impacted public perspectives on abortion, a series of cases built the foundation for the coming revolution in abortion law. The first involved the right to contraception, and the story begins in the 19th century. In 1879, Connecticut senator P.T. Barnum (yes, that P.T. Barnum) introduced a billbarring not only contrace...
The road from Griswold to Roe was not perfectly straight. Two years after Griswold, reproductive rights activist William Bairdoffered contraceptives to an unmarried woman after a lecture on contraception to students at Boston University. He was sentenced to three months in prison. Like Estelle Griswold, Baird appealed his conviction to the Supreme ...
Over the course of nine years, Washington, DC,–based physician Milan Vuitch was arrested 16 timesfor performing abortions, which had been illegal in the district since 1901 except “as necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or health.” Vuitch appealed his eventual conviction, arguing in part that the exception for “health” was unconstit...
Texan Norma McCorvey became pregnant for the third time in 1969. Struggling with drug and alcohol use, she previously relinquished responsibility for her first two children. She decided that she did not want to continue the pregnancy. Texas law, however, allowed abortion only to save the patient’s life. With McCorvey six months pregnant, Texas lawy...
A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas struck down Texas’s abortion ban, finding it overbroad and locating the right to reproductive choice in the 9th and 14th Amendments. Citing Griswold, the court noted that the Constitution guarantees “the right of choice over events which, by their character and conseq...
Sarah Weddington, who was just 26 years old when she stood before the justices of the Supreme Court on December 13, 1971, built her case for the constitutional right to abortion around the 9th and 14th Amendments, arguing that “meaningful” liberty must include the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Although the justices were largely receptiv...
The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 22, 1973. Seven of the nine justices agreed that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment — which says that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” — implies a right to privacy. The majority seized upon Weddington’s definition of liberty,...
On the same day the Supreme Court decided Roe, it decided Doe v. Bolton, which challenged Georgia’s abortion ban. The Georgia law limited abortion to cases of documented rape, a severely disabled fetus, or a threat to life. Before the procedure, it was necessary to obtain the approval of a doctor, two additional consulting physicians, and a hospita...
Oct 24, 2023 · In court, attorneys with the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, abortion-rights groups and physicians argued the law was “void from inception,” saying it violates the state Constitution because it originally passed into law in 2019, when Roe was still in effect.
Feb 10, 2023 · The recent rise in religious exemption claims against abortion bans illustrates how less dominant religious beliefs could serve as a basis for these claims.
Nov 23, 2022 · ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court Wednesday reinstated the state's ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, abruptly ending access to later abortions that had resumed days...
