This week, the director Reed Morano was supposed to fly to Georgia to scout locations for a new show for Amazon Studios called The Power. The drama series is adapted from a novel by Naomi Alderman, in which young women suddenly develop the power to release electrical jolts from their fingers, shifting gender and power dynamics around the world. At least two scouts hired by the show had been working in the Savannah area for several months, prepping for her arrival.

But when Ga. Gov. Brian Kemp signed the “heartbeat” bill on May 7, which effectively bans abortion after six weeks, Morano decided to cancel the trip, pull the scouts, and shut down any possibility of filming a story arc in Georgia. “We had no problem stopping the entire process instantly,” Morano, who won an Emmy for directing three episodes of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, told TIME. “There is no way we would ever bring our money to that state by shooting there.”

Morano is one of the first directors to publicly pull a project out of Georgia after the state passed a law that critics say will make almost all abortions illegal.