There’s a glimmer of light in Georgia this week after state Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state’s cruel abortion ban, which prohibited abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. As many medical professionals and advocates have routinely pointed out, this is often before women realize they’re pregnant in the first place, and the limited set of exceptions in place are both arbitrary and exceedingly narrow.

In his order, which would allow abortions through at least 20 weeks, McBurney noted something crucial that too often gets overlooked in conversations around abortion: this isn’t a matter simply about policy disagreement or religious or moral belief, but the fundamental right to self-determination that is supposed to undergird American principles. He wrote that the ban violated the state constitution because “liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body.”

Thus the act of trying to restrict this specific type of therapeutic care — which, it’s always worth repeating, is safe, effective and medically sound — on ideological grounds is just the sort of government overreach and crushing of individual liberty that a lot of the people most vehemently against abortion claim to cherish. More lawmakers, more officials, more judges should be clear and forceful about this, too, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s disastrous overturning of Roe v. Wade and its far-reaching consequences.

Sometimes leaders have to take stands that might be unpopular or against the grain, but in this case they don’t even have to do that. Abortion rights are enormously, overwhelmingly popular, from deep blue to cherry-red states, as has been demonstrated over and over in state referendums and public polling. To date, not a single referendum concerning abortion has gone the way of the restrictionists.

The only people who really seem to want to restrict them are small minorities of extreme religious conservatives and hyper-conservative GOP lawmakers in statehouses, the judiciary and Congress. Unfortunately, this fringe has outsize influence and political power, which is why we have to keep having this conversation as they endeavor, as they have now over several decades of sustained effort, to force their regressive views on the entire rest of the country.

Let’s not sanitize what this means. Anti-abortion zealots will often claim that there’s nothing to fear from abortion restrictions, that these don’t actually prevent girls and women from receiving medically necessary care and certainly don’t cause excess injury or death. This is provably incorrect. In Georgia itself, ProPublica recently found two cases of women who died after they were refused care that could have easily been provided but for the state’s abortion ban.

In a case the publication detailed, 28-year-old Amber Nicole Thurman slowly succumbed to infection and organ failure as doctors who could have helped stood by and waited for her condition to get bad enough. By the time they actually intervened, it was too late. Thurman left behind a 6-year-old son, who’ll grow up without his mom. In another context, this would be the genesis of a medical malpractice lawsuit and an investigation; here, it was practically mandated by the state. All of this for the benefit of no one. Let’s hope our political figures and judges follow this lead.

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