The Georgia Supreme Court has once again said the state can enforce its lifesaving “heartbeat” law that protects many babies from abortion.

The LIFE Act was briefly overturned by Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney. The activist judge previously claimed that the LIFE Act violated the U.S. Constitution, only to be overturned by the state’s highest court. This time he found a “privacy” right to kill a preborn child in the womb.

“The state Supreme Court reinstated Georgia’s restrictive abortion law one week after a Fulton County Superior Court judge ruled it was unconstitutional,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Oct. 7. The law protects babies when a heartbeat can be detected.

“Whether one couches it as liberty or privacy (or even equal protection), this dispute is fundamentally about the extent of a woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body,” McBurney wrote in his Sept. 30 ruling putting the law on hold. “The baseline rule is clear: a legally competent person has absolute authority over her body and should brook no governmental interference in what she does — and does not do — in terms of health, hygiene, and the like.”

McBurney miscited a 1990 Supreme Court case that actually goes against his point; Cruzan v. Director of Missouri Department of Health found the state acted correctly in protecting a woman in a vegetative state from having a feeding tube removed. In fact, the quote he included, “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body,” comes from a New York case that involved a surgeon operating on someone without her consent, which sounds somewhat like what happens to a baby during an abortion.

Despite this “absolute authority” claim by McBurney, he acknowledged at some point “the pregnancy” (i.e. the human child) has rights, drawing the line around five months.

The ruling is certainly good fodder for the liberal media, with references to The Handmaid’s Tale and women not being “collective owned community property.” It is, however, legally and morally unsound.

Abortion is not simply about one person’s choices, but involves at least two people. And abortion directly infringes on the right to life of the preborn child, who is dependent on his mother, but also has fundamental human rights.

The dependency of a human being does not lower her moral status; otherwise the physically and mentally disabled would have fewer rights. Nor does potential inconvenience of the caretaker diminish human rights; otherwise children would not have any rights until they could take care of themselves.

Furthermore, abortion is not simply “hygiene” like brushing one’s teeth or washing one’s hair. Rather, abortion is the direct and intentional killing of an innocent human child.

The state Supreme Court was right to uphold the law, and it should continue to do so. There is no true “right” to take an innocent human life.