Georgia judge: ‘Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property’
Some key quotes from the order in which Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia’s extremely restrictive abortion ban:
Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.
… [T]he liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they 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.
… [L]iberty 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, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.
Key events
Richard Luscombe
Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has won the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, who declared: “I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to [Donald] Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too.”
Caroline Rose Giuliani was writing in Vanity Fair, where she lamented how her father, who was once the former president’s personal attorney and trusted adviser, became caught up in the “destructive trail” and chaos of the Trump administration and its aftermath.
“I’m unfortunately well suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side,” wrote Giuliani, a California-based film-maker and activist who has frequently taken issue with her father’s political positions.
“I am constantly asking myself how America is back here, even considering the possibility of electing Donald Trump again, after all of the damage he has caused, both in office and since. There are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them.”
Rudy Giuliani, who became an immensely popular mayor of New York after guiding the city through the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, paid a severe price for promoting Trump’s lies that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent.
On Wednesday, Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz will debate Republican Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance for the first time. That debate takes place at 9pm EDT and we will bring it to you live.
Here is more on Biden’s comments, from the press pool report:
Asked about comments from Donald Trump, who has accused him and Governor Cooper of ignoring Republican-voting areas in their response to Helene, POTUS angrily interjected before pool finished asking the question.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying. The governor told him he’s lying. I’ve spoken to the governor, spent time with him, and he told him he’s lying. I don’t know why he does it … that’s simply not true, and it’s irresponsible.”
POTUS also defended spending the weekend in Delaware when asked about the matter. He said Wilmington, Delaware is “90 miles from here.”
“I was on the phone the whole time,” he added.
He also held up what he said was “a list of every resource we’re getting in there” and said the question of most import was “how to get it in.”
“It’s hard to get it from point A to point B. It’s hard to get if somebody’s roads are wiped out. None of these are wiped out. There’s no ability to land, there’s no ability to get trucks, and no ability to get a whole range of things.”
George Chidi
Donald Trump spoke in front of a furniture store gutted by Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, claiming falsely that Georgia’s governor had not been able to reach Joe Biden.
Upon landing in Valdosta, Trump claimed to reporters the president was “sleeping” and that Brian Kemp, the governor, was “calling the president and hasn’t been able to get him”. He repeated the claim when speaking in front of the store.
Kemp refuted the allegation earlier in the day. He said he had been playing phone tag with vice-president Kamala Harris, but also said: “The president just called me yesterday afternoon and he just said ‘Hey, what do you need?’ … He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which, I appreciate that.”
During the White House press briefing on Monday, the homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall said the president offered Kemp “anything” Georgia needed in terms of storm response.
“So, if the governor would like to speak to the president again, of course, the president will take his call,” Sherwood-Randall said.
Trump traveled to the area with evangelist Franklin Graham and truckloads of relief supplies in tow.
“We brought many, many wagons of resources,” he said, without really describing what those resources were beyond a tanker of gasoline and some water. The Billy Graham Evangelical Association did not respond to a request for comment, though its website notes that it has sent chaplains to the affected areas.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins says that Biden has responded to Trump’s baseless claims earlier saying that Governor Kemp Biden had not spoken with Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Collins reports that, speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said Trump was lying. Collins said Biden spoke angrily, saying: “He is lying. Let me get this straight: he’s lying…I’ve spoken to the governor. I’ve spent time with him and he told me he’s lying. I don’t know why he does this.”
Biden, seated in the Oval Office, angrily says Trump is lying. “He is lying. Let me get this straight: he’s lying…I’ve spoken to the governor. I’ve spent time with him and he told me he’s lying. I don’t know why he does this.”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 30, 2024
Joe Biden has released a statement on crime rates, noting that the rates of homicide and violent crimes have declined, and that the homicide rate, in particular, is falling at “record speed”.
The rate of violent crime has declined to its lowest level in 55 years, Biden says.
The comments come as Donald Trump is accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.
Biden said, in part:
This year, the homicide and violent crime rates have continued their rapid decline from their peaks during the last administration. According to new preliminary data submitted to the FBI, in the first half of this year, the homicide rate continued to fall at record speed, declining by 22.7%, while the violent crime rate fell by 10.3% to its lowest level since 1969. These record decreases follow the historic declines in crime in 2023, including the largest-ever decrease in the homicide rate. Communities across our country are safer now than when I took office.
Under the previous administration, we saw the biggest increase in murder rates on record.”
This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage.
Asked about Donald Trump’s claims today that Democratic leaders were failing to help Americans in storm-damageed Republican areas of North Carolina, president Joe Biden said, “He’s lying.”
Today’s White House pool reporter noted that, when asked about Trump’s comments, Biden “ angrily interjected” before the reporter was even done with the question.
“He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said. “The governor told him he’s lying. I’ve spoken to the governor, spent time with him, and he told him he’s lying. I don’t know why he does it … that’s simply not true, and it’s irresponsible.”
After a Georgia judge’s ruling struck down the state’s restrictive 2019 abortion law, which abortion after roughly around six weeks of pregnancy, advocates and analysts have highlighted the order’s bold arguments, which invoked the Handmaid’s Tale and compared certain kinds of abortion bans to “involuntary servitude” or “compulsory labor.”
Some advocates, like senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, have highlighted the broader importance of Georgia allowing access to abortion care through 22 weeks of pregnancy, since many surrounding states in the south also have very restrictive anti-abortion laws.
Others, like my colleague Carter Sherman, have noted that this ruling comes after Georgia has made national headlines after a ProPublica investigation into the deaths of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, who died what experts called “preventable” deaths after delays in care that were related to Georgia’s anti-abortion law.
A Georgia committee of experts in maternal health deemed Candi Miller’s death “preventable.” The group, which includes 10 doctors, directly blamed the state’s abortion ban.https://t.co/SohvOopPxp
— ProPublica (@propublica) September 30, 2024
Thurman died after waiting 20 hours for emergency care under the state’s abortion ban. Sen. Ron Wyden demanded records his committee could review to determine whether the hospital violated the law. “It’s not even a question,” one expert said.https://t.co/42Z3meMpT1
— ProPublica (@propublica) September 29, 2024
Georgia judge describes ‘subtext of involuntary servitude’ in abortion debate
Another key quote from the order, by Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, that overturned Georgia’s restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, which state legislators passed in 2019:
“There is an uncomfortable and usually unspoken subtext of involuntary servitude swirling about this debate, symbolically illustrated by the composition of the legal teams in this case. It is generally men who promote and defend laws like the Life Act, the effect of which is to require only women – and, given the socio-economic and demographic evidence presented at trial, primarily poor women, which means in Georgia primarily black and brown women – to engage in compulsory labor, ie, the carrying of a pregnancy to term at the government’s behest.”
Read my colleague Carter Sherman’s full report here:
Who is Judge Robert McBurney, who struck down Georgia’s restrictive abortion ban?
It’s not the first time Robert C I McBurney, a Fulton county superior court judge based in Atlanta, has made national headlines.
McBurney previously struck down Georgia’s very restrictive ban on abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy and he also presided over parts of the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and key allies, a case that is currently stalled.
McBurney, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed to his role in 2012 by Republican governor Nathan Deal, to fill the seat of a judge who was retiring. He has since run for reelection and won.
In 2023, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called McBurney “the hardest working judge in Georgia” and said that a joke recently at the Atlanta courthouse was , “Aren’t there any other judges in the county?”
McBurney is also set to hear a key case on election regulations in Georgia tomorrow, the Associated Press reports.
Georgia judge: ‘Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property’
Some key quotes from the order in which Judge Robert McBurney struck down Georgia’s extremely restrictive abortion ban:
Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.
… [T]he liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they 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.
… [L]iberty 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, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.
Why a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s very early abortion ban
More from the Associated Press on the legal reasoning behind the order:
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his order that ‘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, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.’
McBurney wrote that his ruling means the law in the state returns to what it was before the law was passed in 2019:
When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then – and only then – may society intervene.
An “arbitrary six-week ban” on abortions “is inconsistent with these rights and the proper balance that a viability rule establishes between a woman’s rights of liberty and privacy and society’s interest in protecting and caring for unborn infants”, the order says.
Abortions in Georgia can once again be performed through 22 weeks – report
After a judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions once a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, which is usually about six weeks into pregnancy, the procedure is once again legal in Georgia through about 22 weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
More context from the Associated Press:
When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion, it opened the door for state bans. Fourteen states now bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Georgia was one of four where the bans kick in after about the first six weeks of pregnancy – which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.
Judge strikes down Georgia’s abortion ban – report
A judge in Georgia struck down the state’s ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The law was similar to many passed by Republican-led states after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Democrats, including Kamala Harris, have recently seized on the law as an example of the consequences of electing Donald Trump and the Republicans, after a woman was reported to have died in the state after being denied lifesaving care due to the law. Here’s more on that:
Up to 600 people unaccounted for in Hurricane Helene, White House says
As many as 600 people remain missing after Hurricane Helene swept through the south-eastern United States, White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall told reporters.
“The current data we have is that it looks like there could be as many as 600 loss of lives, but we don’t have any confirmation of that. We know there are 600 who are either lost or unaccounted for, and so that work is ongoing,” Sherwood-Randall said at the White House press briefing.
She added that there’s a high degree of uncertainty to the numbers:
I’ll caution you, because we’ve seen this before. Those numbers vary widely. There’s a lot of reporting that doesn’t add up about the numbers. And so, while we may see the numbers go up as we get to more locations that have not yet been fully developed in terms of disaster immediate emergency response operations, we may see more people who unfortunately perished, but we may also not see the numbers skyrocket as people have predicted they might.
Authorities in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere have already confirmed more than 100 deaths from the storm that swept in from the Gulf of Mexico:
Donald Trump’s dystopian vision for the United States took a new turn on Sunday, when he mulled adopting something only seen in horror films to fight crime. The Guardian’s Robert Tait has more:
Donald Trump has been accused of invoking plotlines similar to The Purge – a dystopian horror film in which officially sanctioned murder is occasionally legal – as a possible solution to crime in the US after saying it could be eradicated in “one really violent day”.
In what was seen as an extreme display of demagoguery even by his standards, Trump drew cheers from an audience in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a picture of an out-of-control crime spree that he said could be ended “immediately” with one “real rough, nasty day”, or “one rough hour”.
“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing,” Trump said. “And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told, if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension.
“They’re not allowed to do it because the liberal left won’t let them do it. The liberal left wants to destroy them, and they want to destroy our country.”
In a passage that provoked a storm on social media, the former president and Republican nominee then said: “If you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day with the drug stores as an example, where, when they start walking out with … ”
