Georgia Judge Invokes Slavery and The Handmaid’s Tale In Striking Down Abortion Ban
A Georgia state judge has declared null and void Georgia’s highly restrictive law banning abortions after six weeks (detection of fetal heartbeat). The judge did so based on the Georgia Constitution’s equal protection clause, and its clause protecting the “liberty” of Georgia citizens. The judge argues that Georgia courts have interpreted the liberty clause as including a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. You can read the decision HERE.
The decision includes some stunningly powerful language that invokes the book and TV series The Handmaid’s Tale.
“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 . . . 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 to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”
The judge then drops a footnote with an even stronger attack, likening forced pregnancies to slavery and noting that it such rules are mostly imposed by men and disproportionately impact poor women of color.
“There is an uncomfortable and usually unspoken subtext of involuntary servitude swirling about this debate, symbolically illustrated by the composition of the legal teams in this case. It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act, the effect of which is to require only women — and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women — to engage in compulsory labor, i.e., the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the Government’s behest.”
The judge points out that well to do women desiring an abortion generally have the means to leave the state to get one. The judge also found that the statute’s exceptions allowing abortion for physical risks to the mother, but not for mental health risks, discriminated against women with mental health problems in violation of the Georgia Constitution’s equal protection clause.
