ATLANTA — A lawsuit challenging Georgia’s new law banning abortions once a “fetal heartbeat” is detected was filed July 26 by Georgia physicians, reproductive health care providers and advocates.

The new law was allowed to go into effect July 20, and in the lawsuit filed in Superior Court of Fulton County, the plaintiffs argue the abortion law prohibits medically appropriate care for patients suffering pregnancy complications and miscarriages “under the Georgia Constitution’s rights to privacy, liberty and equal protection.”

“When (Gov. Brian) Kemp’s abortion ban suddenly took effect last week and patients across the state had their medical appointments canceled, they were understandably distraught – now forced to travel thousands of miles out of state for care, or else have their health and their futures upended by government-mandated pregnancy and childbirth,” said Julia Kaye, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

Pro-choice advocates and some medical professionals have argued that most women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, especially given that it would give women only two weeks to notice a missed menstrual cycle.

The new law provides exceptions to abortion up to 20 weeks for rape and incest if a police report is filed and for medical emergencies. Medical emergency, per the new law, is defined as “a condition in which an abortion is necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”

Dubbed Georgia’s “heartbeat bill,” it was signed into law by Kemp in 2019, but it was blocked from taking affect due to court challenges. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — a landmark Court case that protected the right to abortion — the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the abortion ban to take effect July 20.

The July 26 lawsuit says the new law violates the Georgia Constitution as it protects the fundamental right to privacy and prohibits interference with an individual’s medical decision to continue a pregnancy; the lawsuit also claims HB 481 violates privacy rights by giving prosecutors access to abortion patients’ private medical records without any due process.

“Since the Supreme Court plunged this country into a national health care crisis, people in states like Georgia have suffered the devastating consequences of anti-abortion lawmakers’ refusal to prioritize the health and wellbeing of their constituents over their own extreme political agendas,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “With today’s state court challenge, we are once again seeking to block this harmful law that denies Georgians the power to make their own personal medical decisions in a state with dangerously high maternal mortality rates.”

The lawsuit asks the state court to immediately block the law while the lawsuit proceeds in the courts.

Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee currently have six-week abortion bans.

Abortion is banned — with at minimum, exceptions for medical emergencies — in Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota.