States’ Rights. 13th Amendment.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation on Tuesday banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant.
Kemp said he was signing the bill “to ensure that all Georgians have the opportunity to live, grow, learn and prosper in our great state.”
The signing caps weeks of tension and protests at the state Capitol, and begins could be a lengthy and costly legal battle over the law’s constitutionality.
But a legal showdown is exactly what supporters are looking for, and Kemp said “we will not back down. We will always continue to fight for life.”
Anti-abortion activists and lawmakers across the country , energized by the new conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that includes President Donald Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, are pushing abortion bans in an attack on the high court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide until a fetus is developed enough to live outside a woman’s uterus.
Staci Fox, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said she has “one message for Governor Kemp: We’ll see you in court.”