APRIL 5, 2019 BY MICHAEL STONE
In an attack on a woman’s right to choose, Alabama lawmakers plan to end all abortion in the state and severely punish any woman who has an abortion with up to 99 years in prison.
ABC News reports:
Alabama lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that would make performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy a felony unless the mother’s health is in jeopardy.
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The Alabama bill, HB314… would ban all abortions, even those using prescription drugs, as soon as a woman is “known to be pregnant.” It does allow for ending a pregnancy when the fetus has a “lethal anomaly” or to avoid a “serious health risk” to the mother, but there are no exceptions for rape and incest. Any attempt to end a healthy pregnancy would be a felony.
The Independent reports:
Alabama is proposing a law that would make carrying out an abortion at any stage of the pregnancy punishable by 10 to 99 years in jail.
The strict abortion ban, which has been branded a “death sentence for women”, would even criminalise performing abortions in cases of rape and incest.
The bill, introduced earlier this week by conservative Christian Republicans desperate to force women to give birth at any cost, would allow for abortions only when there is “a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.”
Taking a page from conservative Christian anti-abortion propaganda, the over-the-top legislation even goes so far as to equate safe and legal abortion to genocide. The bill states:
More than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.
Commenting on the new legislation, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Terri Collins, said:
It simply criminalizes abortion Hopefully, it takes it all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn (Roe versus Wade.)
Calling the proposed law a “death sentence for women across this state,” Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said:
These bans are blatantly unconstitutional and lawmakers know it — they just don’t care. Alabamians are just pawns in this political game to challenge access to safe, legal abortion nationally.
Collins is right. Alabama is just the latest state controlled by conservative Christian Republicans trying to ban abortion. For example, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina are all currently considering similar legislation. The ultimate goal is to challenge the 1973 US Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
Bottom line: In a blatant attack on a woman’s right to choose, a new Alabama law would make abortion punishable by up to 99 years in prison.
The Republican War on Women continues.
