The Blue Wave Misses Big on Georgia's Supreme Court

Georgia voters failed to elect two liberal candidates for the state Supreme Court, instead re-electing conservative incumbents Charles Bethel and Sarah Warren. Projected results indicate Miracle Rankin and former state Sen. Jen Jordan lost their bids, while Ben Land secured another term by running unopposed. The re-election preserves the state’s conservative 8-1 majority that reinstated a six-week abortion ban in 2024. The ban was upheld by Bethel and Warren and is linked to a case where a hospital kept a brain-dead pregnant woman alive as an incubator. Reproductive Freedom for All warned that the court will continue denying emergency care, threatening doctors with criminal prosecution, and maintaining one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country.

"Per projected results from NBC News, Miracle Rankin and former state Sen. Jen Jordan are both to lose their bids to unseat the state's conservative justices, Charles Bethel and Sarah Warren. Bethel and Warren-as well as Ben Land, who ran unopposed-have thus secured another six-year term, meaning the state will now hold onto the same conservative 8-1 majority that reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban in 2024."

"It was under this ban, which Bethel and Warren voted to uphold, BTW, that a hospital turned a brain-dead woman into a live incubator because she was pregnant. "As Trump-aligned extremists reshape the federal judiciary, state supreme courts are increasingly the last line of defense against the erosion of our rights," Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, told Jezebel in a statement."

""The re-election of Georgia Supreme Court Justices Charles Bethel and Sarah Warren means this court will continue to deny emergency care for pregnant people, threaten doctors with criminal prosecution just for doing their jobs, and keep in place one of the most extreme abortion bans in the entire country." Heading into Tuesday, analysts were projecting early-voting lead for Democrats-and one that evidently stressed out Gov. Brian Kemp (R)..."

""If you want people that will actually go up there and, you know, not try to interpret what the law is but follow the law and not try to make it, you should vote for our incumbent judges and justices,"

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