Mohamed Bughrara

Late in July 2022, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling regarding the state’s restrictive 2019 abortion law, which meant it would go into effect immediately. The decision came as no surprise after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which decided for all Americans that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

In Georgia, most abortions are illegal if there is a “detectable human heartbeat.” Cardiac activity can be spotted by ultrasound as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, when many women aren’t even aware they’re pregnant.

It’s difficult to believe that in this day and age, Georgia’s new restrictive abortion law would have been passed by the Georgia General Assembly in 2019. Well, as a rebuttal to the state’s treatment, in early September in the city of Pine Lake, the City Council and mayor voted to decriminalize abortion. 

Pine Lake’s representatives in the Georgia General Assembly are all women, including the city’s Democratic state Rep. Viola Davis and state Sen. Kim Jackson.

Davis stated that she introduced the resolution to the City Council after collaborating with an alliance of abortion activist groups and policymakers following the United States Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. 

The City Council “supports an individual’s right to choose” and “has a responsibility to protect its residents from any violation of their human rights,” according to the resolution.

The city’s four cops are not to make arrests, investigate, provide information about, or even record miscarriage or abortion reports.

Mayor Melanie Hammet had no hesitation in passing the resolution. As the mayor explained, “I had each individual elected member of our group read a section of the resolution aloud to the room so that every woman would have had her voice on it.”