Federal judges in Georgia and Tennessee on Monday blocked two of the country’s strictest laws on abortion.
The LIFE Act banned physicians from performing an abortion once a fetus’s “heartbeat” can be detected by ultrasound, typically around the 6-week mark of a pregnancy. Blocking of the “heartbeat” law means women in Georgia can continue to get abortions during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
“It is in the public interest, and is this court’s duty, to ensure constitutional rights are protected. Because ’the constitutional liberty of the woman to have some freedom to terminate her pregnancy' is implicated here, the court finds that a permanent injunction of H.B. 481 would not disserve the public interest,” Jones wrote in the order.
In Tennessee, U.S. District Judge William Campbell Jr. granted a temporary restraining order regarding a law that Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed hours earlier banning abortions as early as 6 weeks into pregnancy and prohibiting abortions based on race, sex, or diagnosis of Down syndrome.
In his ruling, Campbell wrote that he’s “bound by the Supreme Court holdings prohibiting undue burdens on the availability of pre-viability abortions.”
“One of the most important things we can do to be pro-family is to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our state, and there is none more vulnerable than the unborn,” he said in a Twitter announcement of the bill.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and women’s health provider Planned Parenthood filed a joint lawsuit in federal court challenging the bill.
The Susan B. Anthony List, one of the United States’ largest pro-life groups, had previously praised the Tennessee “heartbeat” bill.
“This law recognizes the humanity of the unborn child by stopping abortion as soon as a heartbeat can be detected, protecting them from lethal discrimination in the womb, and ending late-term abortions after five months, when unborn babies can feel excruciating pain,” Dannenfelser added.
Many supporters of “heartbeat” abortion bills hope lawsuits over them head to the Supreme Court for a fresh legal challenge to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that effectively made access to abortion a constitutional right.
At least eight states passed so-called heartbeat bills or other sweeping bans in 2019, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee.
All of the new bans joined the fate of earlier heartbeat abortion bans from Arkansas, North Dakota, and Iowa in being at least temporarily blocked by judges.
