City of Atlanta employees can use sick leave for abortion-related care

Georgia’s law prohibits abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is typically around six weeks into pregnancy and often before a woman even knows she’s pregnant. The Georgia Supreme Court recently reinstated the ban after a Fulton County judge ruled against it. The council’s legislation accounts for a potential need by employees to travel out of state to seek abortion services.

“We want to make sure that city employees have access to reproductive health care and can use their sick leave to be covered,” said council member Liliana Bakhtiari, who spearheaded the legislation. “In a time and in an administration where women are having their rights stripped away, we want to make sure that we’re protecting our city employees at least.”

In anticipation of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Atlanta City Council also passed a resolution in 2022 urging police to make investigations into abortions their “lowest possible priority.”

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

As the 2025 legislative session is underway at the state Capitol just blocks from City Hall, state lawmakers said they don’t plan on changing Georgia’s restrictive abortion law this year.

House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters last month that the issue isn’t on the General Assembly’s to-do list despite the death, first reported last year, of a Georgia woman from postabortion complications because medical professionals had trouble interpreting the law.

Nonprofit news organization ProPublica reported last year that two Georgia women died from complications after receiving abortions, both of which the state’s maternal mortality review committee had deemed to be “preventable.”