ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp used his emergency powers to extend an executive order that limits legal liability for Georgia’s hospitals and medical workers during the coronavirus pandemic, while also including a provision that specifically excludes abortion providers from the protections.
The order signed Tuesday renews authority first granted in April that designates hospitals and front-line medical staffers as “auxiliary emergency management workers” and provides them additional legal protection from personal injury lawsuits during the pandemic.
For the first time, however, the Republican also specifically exempts from protection the medical employees who perform abortions. His office said in a statement the decision will not affect facilities that doctors use to perform abortions.
“It should come as no surprise that elective abortions are not emergency management activities,” Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce said. “Abortion providers are undeserving of enhanced liability protections because they are doing nothing to fight COVID-19 in Georgia.”
Kemp ran for governor on a promise to limit abortions, and last year he signed into law one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion measures. It seeks to outlaw most abortions once a doctor can detect a fetus’s “heartbeat” — usually about six weeks into a pregnancy — and was soon challenged in court.