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If you listen to one side of the media, you might think Georgia is in crisis.

On Tuesday Gov. Brian Kemp signed the LIFE Act, which prohibits aborting a baby after a doctor can detect its heartbeat, which is around six weeks into pregnancy.

Opponents protest that the act is a scary infringement upon women’s rights, and six weeks is before most women know they’re pregnant. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., joined a flurry of national voices condemning the legislation, noting that “‘6 weeks pregnant’ = 2 weeks late on your period.” She’s right, but that doesn’t make hers a good argument against the much-decried HB 481.

Unlike other “heartbeat bills” (such as those considered in Ohio and Iowa), the LIFE Act doesn’t just limit abortion. It changes the definition of a person under the law.

The bill says that “unborn children shall be worthy of recognition as natural persons under the laws of this State.” It establishes that a fetus is a human being for all intents and purposes, including counting state populations and filing income tax forms.

If it the fetus inside the womb is a person, it doesn’t matter whether the woman already knows she’s carrying it. In fact, Roe v. Wade even confirms this point.

“If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Jane Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment,” the Supreme Court case reads.

Georgia state Rep. Ed Setzler, an author of the LIFE Act, said changing the definition of a person under the act is consistent with science, and doing so makes the abortion ban consistent with U.S. law.

“Science tells us that a child with a beating heart and a functioning circulatory system is a living, distinct human being that’s worthy of the full, legal protection of any other person,” Setzler said. “Law tells us that, consistent with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, if the state establishes the personhood of the unborn child, the arguments of the abortion on-demand way of thinking collapse.”

Critics on the Left will continue to say that abortion legislation like HB 481 is turning America into “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But it doesn’t require some theocratic mindset to say a baby with a beating heart deserves constitutional protections, just as the mother deserves her own constitutional rights.

“Georgia has finally established the personhood of the unborn child,” Setzler said, “and as such [the child] will get full, equal protections under our law.”

Georgia’s new “heartbeat” law doesn’t fly in the face of Roe v. Wade. It accepts the case’s own logic and simply defines a human being how it should’ve been defined all along.