Ga. abortion ban after 6 weeks reinstated by state’s Supreme Court

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 earlier.

In a one-page order, the justices put a lower court ruling overturning the ban on hold while they consider an appeal.

Abortion providers who had resumed performing the procedure past six weeks again had to stop.

Abortion advocates blasted the order, saying it will traumatize women who must now arrange travel to other states for an abortion or keep their pregnancies. Women waiting for an abortion at providers’ offices were turned away, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, which represents abortion providers challenging the ban.

“It is outrageous that this extreme law is back in effect, just days after being rightfully blocked,” said Alice Wang, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights that represented abortion providers challenging Georgia’s ban.

The state attorney general’s office in a court filing said “untold numbers of unborn children” would “suffer the permanent consequences” if the state Supreme Court did not issue a stay and halt the Nov. 15 decision by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.

McBurney ruled the state’s abortion ban was invalid because when it was signed into law in 2019, U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by Roe v. Wade and another ruling allowed abortion well past six weeks.

Georgia’s ban took effect in July, the month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present.

Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart around six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were effectively banned at a point before many women know they are pregnant.

Indonesia earthquake:

Searchers in Indonesia on Wednesday rescued a 6-year-old boy who was trapped for two days under the rubble of his house, which collapsed in an earthquake that killed at least 271 people, as heavy monsoon rains soaked survivors in makeshift shelters and forced a suspension of rescue efforts.

The death toll was likely to rise with many people still missing, some remote devastated areas still unreachable and over 2,000 people injured in Monday’s 5.6-magnitude quake.

More than 12,000 army personnel were deployed Wednesday to bolster search efforts by police, the search and rescue agency and volunteers, said Suharyanto, chief of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, who only uses one name.

About 100 of those confirmed dead were children, Suharyanto also said.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Wednesday to order a land invasion of northern Syria targeting Kurdish groups, amid yearslong border violence and repeated Turkish incursions.

Turkey has launched a barrage of airstrikes on suspected militant targets in northern Syria and Iraq in recent days, in retaliation for a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that Ankara blames on the Kurdish groups. The groups have denied involvement, and say Turkish strikes have killed civilians and threatened the fight against the Islamic State group.

Erdogan said Wednesday

Turkey-Syria tension:

in a speech to his ruling party’s legislators that air operations are “just the beginning” and that Turkey is determined to “close down all of our southern borders ... with a security strip that will prevent the possibility of attacks on our country.”

Turkey has carried out incursions into Syria since 2016 and controls parts of northern Syria.

Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria, said his group is prepared to repel a ground invasion by Turkey.

The Taliban lashed three women and nine men in front of hundreds of spectators in a provincial stadium Wednesday, signaling the religious extremist group’s resumption of a brutal form of punishment.

The office of the governor of Logar province, south of the capital of Kabul, invited “honorable scholars, mujahideen, elders, tribal leaders and local people” via social media to the stadium in Pul Alam.

Those punished received between 21 and 39 lashes each, after being convicted in a local court of theft and adultery, said an official in the governor’s office who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Taliban lashings: Scotland independence:

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Scotland does not have the power to hold a new referendum on independence without the consent of the British government.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would respect the ruling but continue the fight for independence, saying that Scotland’s “democratic right to choose our own future” was at stake.

Independence supporters planned to rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and at other sites later Wednesday.