Good news for women in Georgia and beyond

Via Jessica Valenti at Abortion Every Day:

A Georgia judge has struck down the state’s 6-week abortion ban! In an absolutely epic ruling, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney didn’t just repeal the law—but eviscerated it as forcing women to be “human incubators.”

“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.

…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.”

I mean, wow. (McBurney even added in a footnote, that “it is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act.”)

We needed our occasional win, especially in a state where women can't put abortion on the ballot for a popular vote. It may take a little while to learn whether Judge McBurney's rule survives appeals.

Ten states will be voting on reproductive freedom this year. Wherever abortion has been put to vote, so far we win.

• • •

The apparently tireless Jessica Valenti has a book released today from Penguin Random House  on the ongoing struggle: Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win.

We are incomplete if we cannot control out bodies.