Georgia General Assembly Convenes January 9th for 40 Days

Four State-wide Questions Passed November 8th

Of Georgia’s 6,961,423 active voters, only 56.9% voted in the General Election. They passed two constitutional amendments and two state-wide referenda. All concern money as follows:

• Amends State Constitution: The State salary will be withheld from the Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State School Superintendent, Commissioner of Insurance, Commissioner of Agriculture, Commissioner of Labor, or any legislator that is indicted for a felony. Currently, they are paid until the case is concluded.
• Amends State Constitution: Local governments and school boards are now authorized to give tax relief for local properties that are severely damaged or destroyed by a disaster.
• Amends current law: Dairy products and unfertilized eggs are added to existing agricultural tax exemptions, effective January 1, 2023.
• Amends current law: A state-wide tax exemption is approved for certain equipment timber producers use to produce or harvest timber, effective January 1, 2023.

H.B. 1 Aims to Punish Georgia for its “Pro-Birth” Heartbeat Law
In mid-November 2022, a Fulton County Superior Court Judge invalidated two abortion restriction sections of Georgia’s Heartbeat Law. After the Georgia Supreme Court reenacted the Heartbeat Law November 23, 2022, H.B. 1 was pre-filed for the 2023 legislative session.

H.B. 1 Georgia Pro-Birth Accountability Act, a November pre-filed bill by Representative Dar’shun Kendrick (D-93), punishes “Pro-Birth” Georgia for disallowing abortions to pregnant women who want to terminate a pregnancy. If this passes, the State’s “punishment” for failing to provide abortions would require Georgia to pay for carrying a baby to term, rearing the child until age 18, and provide continual financial and nutritional help for both mother and child.

H.B. 1 begins with this: “A pregnant woman who would be legally [federally] allowed to choose to terminate her pregnancy, but for a [Georgia] law prohibiting an abortion upon a detectable human heartbeat of an embryo or fetus, and who is accordingly compelled by the state to carry the pregnancy to term and give birth to a child is entitled to be compensated by the state as provided in Code Section 31-9C-2,” which would be new law contained in 36 lines of this bill.

Following that are 20 lines explaining the plan for the Department of Human Services to process a compensation claim for delivering a baby she wanted to abort. The last five lines in the bill require the General Assembly to establish a separate annual appropriations fund to provide the proposed compensation and fund the Department’s operational costs.

• To read more of the pre-filed bills, click here.