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The judge lays out a powerful argument that opposition to abortion is not moral or medical, but a political position that exists primarily to oppress women by forcing them to serve as human incubators.
"A former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate appointed to the bench by a Republican governor, McBurney didn’t mince words as he found the Georgia law violated the state constitution. He called out the “awkwardly arbitrary” limit set by the Georgia abortion law, which prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat.” As McBurney observed, at this stage “the ‘heart’ is a tiny cluster of cells that periodically pulse, pushing blood through the quarter-inch embryo that still sports a vestigial tail.” And why draw the line there? Georgia “was unable to articulate why a four- or five-week-old unborn child’s life was not worth enough to protect,” McBurney noted. “A five-week-old pregnancy is no more viable that a nine-week-old, but women are free to end such pregnancies (if they can detect them).
”McBurney was blunt: Georgia, he wrote, “has seized upon a point in gestation that has political salience, rather than medical or moral salience.” Blunter still, and more important, he was unsparing in his language about what it means, legally and practically, to force women to continue pregnancies against their will.
As a legal matter, “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “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.”
As a practical matter, McBurney was even clearer about the implications of requiring women to “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,” McBurney wrote. “... When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then — and only then — should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.”"
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"A former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate appointed to the bench by a Republican governor, McBurney didn’t mince words as he found the Georgia law violated the state constitution. He called out the “awkwardly arbitrary” limit set by the Georgia abortion law, which prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat.” As McBurney observed, at this stage “the ‘heart’ is a tiny cluster of cells that periodically pulse, pushing blood through the quarter-inch embryo that still sports a vestigial tail.” And why draw the line there? Georgia “was unable to articulate why a four- or five-week-old unborn child’s life was not worth enough to protect,” McBurney noted. “A five-week-old pregnancy is no more viable that a nine-week-old, but women are free to end such pregnancies (if they can detect them).
”McBurney was blunt: Georgia, he wrote, “has seized upon a point in gestation that has political salience, rather than medical or moral salience.” Blunter still, and more important, he was unsparing in his language about what it means, legally and practically, to force women to continue pregnancies against their will.
As a legal matter, “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “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.”
As a practical matter, McBurney was even clearer about the implications of requiring women to “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,” McBurney wrote. “... When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then — and only then — should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.”"
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