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robert mcburney
Judge Strikes Down Georgia's Six-Week Abortion Ban in 'Absolutely Epic Ruling'
"Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy," Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his decision.
Sep 30, 2024
Reproductive rights defenders cheered Monday's ruling by a Georgia judge striking down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that means the medical procedure will be legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney excoriated the LIFE Act, which was signed into law in 2019 by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and prohibits abortion care after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. The so-called "fetal heartbeat" law—a medically misleading term—is applicable before many people even know they're pregnant.
Other states including Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio passed similar "heartbeat" laws in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, which occurred in 2022 when the tribunal's right-wing supermajority issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
"Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote," McBurney wrote in his ruling. "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."
"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 said.
"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," McBurney added.
As Jessica Valenti noted on her Abortion, Every Day Substack, "the ruling comes just weeks after ProPublica's investigation into the deaths of two women killed by Georgia's abortion ban, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller.
As NBC Newsreported Monday:
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and other plaintiffs in 2019 soon after Kemp signed it into law. As it faced the legal challenge, in 2022, McBurney ruled that year that the law violated the U.S. Constitution in 2022 and struck it down. The Georgia Supreme Court, however, soon took up the case and allowed it to remain in effect. The case was sent back to McBurney, who found the law in violation of the state's constitution.
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective executive director Monica Simpson said in a statement that Monday's ruling is "a significant step in the right direction towards achieving reproductive justice in Georgia."
"We are encouraged that a Georgia court has ruled for bodily autonomy," Simpson continued. "At the same time, we can't forget that every day the ban has been in place has been a day too long—and we have felt the dire consequences with the devastating and preventable deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller."
"For years, Black women have sounded the alarm that abortion bans are deadly," she noted. "While true justice would mean Amber and Candi were still with us today, we will continue to demand accountability to ensure that their lives—and the lives of others who we have yet to learn of—were not lost in vain."
"We know that the fight continues as anti-abortion white supremacists will stop at nothing to control our bodies and attack our liberation," Simpson added. "We are ready for them and will never back down until we achieve reproductive justice: the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, the human right to have children, or not, and raise them in safe and sustainable communities."
Alice Wang, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that McBurney "has rightfully struck down Georgia's six-week abortion ban as a flagrant violation of Georgia's longstanding and robust right to privacy, restoring access to abortion at a time when too many have been prevented from accessing this critical health care and from deciding what is best for their bodies, health, and family lives."
"For too long, the ban has caused a public health crisis, as evidenced by the testimony plaintiffs presented at trial and devastating stories recently reported about the preventable deaths of Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman," she continued. "Today's ruling is a step toward ensuring that people can access and clinicians can provide critical healthcare without fear of criminalization or stigma."
"This victory demonstrates that when courts faithfully apply constitutional protections for bodily autonomy, laws that restrict access to abortion and force people to continue pregnancies against their will cannot stand," Wang added.
Since the Dobbs ruling, 13 states have passed abortion bans with limited exceptions and 28 states have prohibited the procedure based on gestational duration, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
However, there has been tremendous nationwide pushback against abortion bans, with voters opting to uphold reproductive rights every time the issue appears on state ballots—including in conservative Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio.
As many as 10 states could have abortion rights measures on the ballot in this November's election, which at the top of the ticket pits reproductive freedom champion and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against former Republican President Donald Trump, who has boasted about appointing three right-wing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and who critics fear would sign a national abortion ban if one were passed by Congress.
Trump also said he would allow states to monitor people's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban.
Kemp's office slammed McBurney's ruling.
"Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives have been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge," Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. "Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn."
Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is expected to appeal to the state Supreme Court to block Monday's ruling.
"We are prepared to continue fighting this case regardless," the Center for Reproductive Rights vowed on social media, "and we will NOT back down from this fight."
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Another Georgia Court Denies Trump Bid to Derail Fulton County Probe
The decision follows the district attorney suggesting that charges for 2020 election interference loom. As she put it, "The work is accomplished."
Jul 31, 2023
A Georgia judge on Monday rejected an effort by former President Donald Trump—who is seeking the 2024 Republican nomination—to upend Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' probe of attempts to overturn the state's 2020 presidential election results.
The nine-page order from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney came ahead of anticipated charges in the investigation and after a similar unanimous decision in mid-July by the Georgia Supreme Court, whose justices were mostly appointed by GOP governors.
In a March motion joined the following month by pro-Trump "alternate" presidential elector Cathleen Latham, the ex-president sought to quash the final report of a special purpose grand jury convened by Willis, prevent prosecutors from using any evidence derived from the jury's work, and disqualify Willis' office from further probing or prosecuting alleged interference with the election.
"The court now finds that neither Trump nor Latham enjoys standing to mount a challenge—at this pre-indictment phase of the proceedings—to the continued investigation into and potential prosecution of possible criminal interference in the 2020 general election in Georgia," wrote McBurney. "The movants' asserted 'injuries' that would open the doors of the courthouse to their claims are either insufficient or else speculative and unrealized."
"Arguments like those being made prematurely in the pending motions can be more effectively (and reasonably) presented and ruled upon when the full picture of who is being charged with what has been painted," he continued. "Guessing at what that picture might look like before the investigative dots are connected may be a popular game for the media and blogosphere, but it is not a proper role for the courts and formal legal argumentation."
The judge added that "Trump and Latham both seek to have the special purpose grand jury's final report locked away from public view forever. Such permanent silencing of that investigative body is not what either statutory or case law generally allows."
As for their "bold" request to disqualify Willis, McBurney concluded that neither of the primary grounds for such action, conflict of interest or forensic misconduct, had been met. In fact, he wrote, "the district attorney's office has been doing a fairly routine—and legally unobjectionable—job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine."
As The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported Monday:
McBurney's order comes just days after Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster scheduled a hearing for August 10 on a secondary bid by Trump to disqualify Willis and quash the special grand jury's final report. Trump's lawyers said they filed this challenge—called a writ of mandamus and prohibition—because it had taken McBurney months to rule on the former president's original motion. Schuster was assigned the case, filed in Fulton Superior Court, as a visiting judge because all of Fulton's judges were recused from hearing the challenge.
"Perplexingly, prematurely, and with the standard pugnacity, Trump has filed not one but two mandamus actions against the district attorney and this court," one the Georgia Supreme Court has already dismissed, McBurney noted.
It is not clear whether the August 10 hearing will still take place.
Meanwhile, orange security barriers have been installed "near the main entrance of the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta," which The Washington Postcalled "the most visible sign yet of the looming charging decision in a case that has ensnared not only Trump but several high-profile Republicans who could either face charges or stand witness in a potential trial unlike anything seen before in this Southern metropolis."
The barriers are among various security measures taken by law enforcement along with Wills and her staff—who have faced an onslaught of threats including racist, menacing phone calls—in preparation for charges that are expected to be filed during the first few weeks of August.
The Post pointed out that "Willis has strongly hinted for months that she will seek multiple indictments in the case, using Georgia's expansive anti-racketeering statutes that allow prosecutors not only to charge in-state wrongdoing but to use activities in other states to prove criminal intent in Georgia."
Willis on Saturday made clear to the Atlanta television station 11Alive that her office is prepared to move forward, saying that "the work is accomplished. We've been working for two-and-a-half years. We're ready to go."
In a series of posts on his Truth Social platform Monday morning, Trump—who is leading polls for the crowded field of GOP challengers to Democratic President Joe Biden—suggested, yet again, that any charges related to the 2020 election are politically motivated.
"The Radical Left Democrat Thugs shouldn't be allowed to investigate me during, and in the middle of, my campaign for President," Trump said. "Why didn't they file these ridiculous charges 2.5 years ago? They waited because they wanted to illegally and negatively influence the 2024 Presidential Election, arguably the most important Election in the history of the USA."
If Trump is charged in Georgia next month, it will be his third indictment this year. The other two—in April and June—were the result of investigations by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is also leading a probe into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which could lead to additional charges against the twice-impeached former president.
While Congress was certifying Biden's win two years ago, Trump said in a speech outside the White House: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard... We're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give... our Republicans—the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help—we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
Trump said Monday that "I assume that an Indictment from Deranged Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of Thugs, pertaining to my 'PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY Speech, will be coming out any day now, as yet another attempt to cover up all of the bad news about bribes, payoffs, and extortion, coming from the Biden 'camp. This seems to be the way they do it. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!"
Some advocacy groups and legal experts argue that regardless of any charges related to January 6 or in other cases, Trump's incitement of insurrection disqualifies him from holding office again because of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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