Alabama Senate Passes Abortion Law With Only Exception for the Mother’s Life
But will Republican Gov. Kay Ivey sign the bill into law?
Alabama’s Senate passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, 25-6. It now heads to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey.
The bill makes it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion. Usually, states have exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and if the mother’s life is in danger. Alabama’s bill only allows an abortion if the mother is in danger.
The Human Life Protection Act, the name of the bill, states doctors face 10-99 years in prison. The woman will not receive felony charges if she has an abortion.
The legislature passed the bill to protect the life of an unborn human being. However, the author made her intention known that she wants to force abortion back into the courts. From The Blaze (emphasis mine):
Under the bill, abortion is banned in all cases except in situations when it would be necessary in order to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, which the author, state Rep. Terri Collins, said was intentional in order to give the bill a higher chance of forcing federal court, and eventually Supreme Court challenges.
Mothers who get abortions would not be prosecuted under this law. Those who perform abortions would be criminally charged and could face between 10 and 99 years in prison if convicted.
This bill, which goes even further toward banning abortion than Georgia’s pro-life “heartbeat” abortion law, is another attempt to force the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court with the aim of weakening or overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Washington Post reported that Collins said her bill is to challenge “Roe v. Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn because an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection.”
I guess state legislatures want to push abortion in the courts because President Donald Trump has placed two more conservatives on the Supreme Court. Both of those men told the Senate that Roe v. Wade is established law and will follow precedent, but who knows? Maybe they will change their minds.
As much as I hate abortion, Roe vs. Wade will not go away until the government defines life. I encourage people to end abortion by changing people’s hearts and minds. Science provides the obvious answer, which I provided in my post about Georgia’s heartbeat law.
Ivey will receive the bill Wednesday, but no one knows how she will vote. Her deputy press secretary said that Ivey will not provide any comments on the bill “until she has had a chance to thoroughly review the final version of the bill that passed.”
Ivey has “made statements supporting pro-life positions, including bans without exceptions for rape or incest.” Considering this bill does not include those exceptions, it would not surprise me if she chooses not to sign the bill.
Of course, the bill has caused the left to become unhinged and go heavy on the hyperbole. Oh my goodness Alabama’s law shows The Handmaid’s Tale is coming to America! Evil males want to control a woman’s body! Democratic State Rep. Bobby Singleton even declared that those who voted for the bill “just raped the state of Alabama yourself.”
Goodness. What a slap in the face to actual rape victims. The Washington Examiner reported other comments from Democrats:
In the Alabama Senate on Tuesday, Democrats said it was wrong for the government to make decisions about pregnancies on behalf of women and their families, and worried about girls who become pregnant after being victims of incest.
“This is strictly about choice,” said Democratic state Sen. Rodger Smitherman during debate on the floor ahead of the vote. “If it’s a woman it should be her choice.”
Democrats also argued that the state would spend too much money litigating the decision, at a time when Republicans have said there isn’t enough money for the state to fund healthcare services.
Democratic state Sen. Vivian Figures offered an amendment that would have attorney fees to defend the law paid for by the members of the legislature who voted in favor of the bill.
“You’re wiling to gamble that it’s going to do what you want it to do, then you all will have no problem dividing whatever [that fee] is going to be,” Figures said when she introduced the amendment, which was voted down.
I honestly do not think this will hold up in the courts until the government defines life. Even with science right in their face, they avoid this subject like the plague.
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Which do you think Democrats will be more upset over? This or the right to kill babies after being born?
Sans any political or religious overtures, the best scientific definition I’ve seen is neural tube closure, which is closely followed by the beginning of fetal brain wave activity.
This is around week 4 to 6 (later end of range for first brain waves).
There are arguments about the “sophistication” of such activity, but we are talking about an electrochemical brain starting up not shutting down (shutting down as in a persistent vegetative state), so there are vast differences in my opinion.
It is high time we stop citing science regarding morality. Science can only speak to questions involving empirical evidence. It is a mechanical tool that provides philosophers sort out feelings vs myth vs superstition vs hard data. Not all questions can be addressed with data. In the end, science just defines a line where we can believe based on the best evidence… so far. Thus, science too is a belief system.
Abortion is a moral issue. Science can never produce a testable hypothesis that answers the question of killing a fetus is right or wrong, good or evil. Therefore, we should not be looking to science for answers on this issue.
Science is amoral but also objective.
That’s why I said sans religious or political overtures…I should/could have added ethical to that list.
Yep. I’m not anti-science but I am annoyed that science has decided to place itself above philosophy and religion. That’s like a hammer being more important than the carpenter.
To somewhat slide on to a tangent, I am for separation of church and state in many ways.
Likewise, I think there should be a counterbalance to science and its most devout ignoramuses (the champions of science whose experience consists of reading media articles about science), so that it can not be politicized in the way that it has been.
However, it is difficult at present to separate funding of science from government, so I am not sure what that counterbalance should be exactly.
@healthguyfsu: “Science is amoral but also objective.”
When scientists stoop to conflate their personal opinion as scientific opinion, that is not being objective nor intellectually honest. Most of the interesting questions do not lend themselves to scientific analysis.
Also, ALL laws are founded in morality. Murder is a crime purely because we all agree that it is wrong. Science plays no part in it. Same with abortion. Same with the existence or non-existence of God. You either believe in God or believe He doesn’t exist. Show me a testable hypothesis on this issue. There is no objective empirical evidence to argue either way. It’s all about what we believe.
But what we believe matters. Science can help us with some questions and problems but not on the most important and timeless questions. Science never arrives at “the truth”. It only provides the best answers for questions asked in a certain way. At some point, it is “good enough” and we go with it because it is not worth pursuing it further with better questions. At that point, we are acting on the belief that it is the best solution available at this time.
Science can set thresholds for legal and ethical claims. For example, we know that human reproduction only occurs with the coupling of a masculine male and feminine female. This includes proxy males in the form of artificial insemination. We know that human evolution begins with conception, followed by Nature’s or anthropogenic choice.
This is not good. The courts will of course overturn it immediately, as they must, until it reaches the Supreme Court. I’m concerned that the current court will also overturn it, and thus set a new and stronger precedent reinforcing Roe and Casey, and setting the cause back at least 15 years. This and similar efforts need to wait for another SCOTUS appointment or two, to ensure that we get the right decision this time.
You’re thinking very strategically on this one. I think a lot times Conservatives don’t get strategic enough in their plans of action. We all know the Dems think that far ahead. When SCOTUS inevitably hears this one they can uphold or strike down. Striking down would only strengthen precedent. I’m all for saving lives immediately but it may be better to play the long game. Very tough moral dilemma.
Alcohol Prohibition was very strategic. How did that work out?
Passing laws to change human nature? Where is the USSR when you need them?
Wait!
What?
No support for marijuana? A first for you.
I have to agree that the Supreme Court is going to be a problem. No one should expect anything good from Kavanaugh. Anthony Kennedy, one of the authors of the Casey opinion, was his mentor. And Roberts? Does anyone honestly expect judicial integrity from him?
You are left with a non-government solution.
Convince women to not have abortions.
This constant resort to government is socialism.
Republicans seem to like it as much as the Democrats do. Just for different things.
Are you an anarchist? Do you think the solution to burglary and rape is to convince people not to break into each other’s houses and not to rape each other, and that it is socialism to resort to government to enforce this? If not, why is abortion different?
I am not an anarchist, I am a minarchist. I think government should be small and should do very few things, but one of the very few things it should do is punish those who initiate force or fraud against others, whether it’s rape, theft, or murder. And I think government is especially needed when the victim of a crime is unable to protest or to protect herself, or to pursue a private prosecution, e.g. because she’s dead.
“This constant resort to government is socialism.”
MSimon, you’re not that stupid.
There is another non-government solution.
If anyone claims that it’s a baby not a clump of cells, then they need to explain, in detail, why lethal force against someone who we know is going to deliberately kill it isn’t justified.
Just how pro-life are you?
That’s easy. Because (1) the expected murder is not imminent, and (2) non-lethal force is sufficient to prevent it. Either of those conditions, let alone both, rules out lethal force to prevent any murder.
Oh? Walking into an abortion clinic seems pretty imminent to me.
And non-lethal force is not certain.
Now that I’ve disposed of your straw men, answer the question: Is it a baby, and if it is, is lethal force justified against its’ killer?
Not to the law.
It doesn’t matter. Where non-lethal force will do, lethal force is not permitted.
Kavanaugh was very clear that he agreed with his mentor Kennedy’s position in Casey. It’s a perfectly reasonable position to have, even a conservative one, but it’s not one I agree with and I don’t want the case to come before him until there’s a clear majority against it.
I agree with Milhouse for a different reason.
It is a progressive tactic to try to push too far in the hopes of landing closer to your side than prior. It doesn’t work and alienates a segment of the voting populace.
If your question is will a career GOP politician do what they promised to do during their campaign, then the answer is “NO”.
“Both of those men told the Senate that Roe v. Wade is established law and will follow precedent, but who knows?”
I’ve always wondered about this bit. For legal stuff, there seems to be this conventional wisdom that we keep on pounding laws to push us further and further left, i.e. homosexual “marriage” and then everything stops once it achieves its leftward lurch and becomes ‘established law’, never again to be reviewed.
This is not how law is done in the US, we are not all captives of some marxist supreme court.
Yes, it would be nice if eccentric interpretations—and even perversions—of acts of Congress were not themselves considered “law”.
Shhhhhhhhh already! You’re not supposed to point out that Plessy v. Ferguson was “established law” for 58 years before Brown v. Board of Ed.
Toothless.
All doctor has to do is certify the mother’s life is in danger.
What doctor won’t do that? $$$$$$
Yes, likely to suffer a fatal attack of “triggering,” or something.
Certifying that the mother’s health is in danger is too vague, and we’ve seen what lengths doctors will go to in order to issue such certificates on the most frivolous grounds. But certifying that there’s an actual credible threat to the mother’s life is much more difficult. If a doctor wants to keep their professional license they will not be able to certify cases where this is just obviously not true. But we don’t want to close this door too tightly, because there are cases, however rare, where the baby is literally endangering its mother’s life, and killing it is justified as defense of others.
Science is amoral but also objective.
That’s why I said sans religious or political overtures…I should/could have added ethical to that list.
and this ended up in the wrong place
Not sure this really does anything.
Apparently, Alabama has like 2 abortion clinics in the state. I bet a large portion of those seeking an abortion already travel to Atlanta.
Abortion is murder. Isn’t it? And Premeditated at that.
The death penalty is absolutely called for. Legally.
There is no statute of limitations on murder. We have at least 30 million women who will need to be put to death.
Except it is not popular. What is? The doctor gets convicted of misdemeanor murder and the woman goes free.
And this is worth a moral panic?
The woman is not the murderer. She’s merely the person hiring the hit man. The hit man is a moral agent, a person with his own conscience, and is 100% responsible for his own actions. I would like her to be hit with some sort of penalty, but certainly not anything like what the murderer should get. And I’m OK with her not getting punished at all; if there are no hit men there will be nobody hiring them.
In an actual murder case, the person hiring the hit man is 100% as guilty, and gets the same charges, as the hit man. Why shouldn’t this be so in an abortion case? Giving the mother a pass while giving the abortionist life in prison makes women into a class of nobility (not that they aren’t already, witness the bevy of cases where a woman makes false criminal accusations and never gets charged, or criminal sentencing in general of women) and undermines the moral statement you’re making by passing this law.
I agree that this is an inconsistency, but I think the injustice is more on the other side. The person hiring the hit man isn’t morally as guilty as the hit man, and the law shouldn’t consider him so. I would prefer to change the law so that the hirer is charged with conspiracy to murder, or as an accomplice to murder, but not with murder itself.
Pass a law that requires that the fetus feels no pain. Structure the law so that it follows the legal rationale outline in the Baze dissent.
Watch the liberal wing of the court perform the legal gymnastics on the undue burden.
From Ginsburg’s Baze Dissent – I would not dispose of the case so swiftly given the character of the risk at stake. Kentucky’s protocol lacks basic safeguards used by other States to confirm that an inmate is unconscious before injection of the second and third drugs. I would vacate and remand with instructions to consider whether Kentucky’s omission of those safeguards poses an untoward, readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe and unnecessary pain.
Yet she provides no justification to prevent the unneccessary and severe pain to the fetus.
This maneuver strikes me as a very liberal-type tactic. I can’t say I’m impressed.
Did you forget Alcohol Prohibition?
Most Conservatives would like to. They want to believe the power of law is unlimited.
It is not.
There is plenty of progressivism to go around. Left and right. Both shout “morals” and “morality” as they make laws to change behavior to their liking. The left just tends to be more frank about it lately, because there has been such a movement further left within the voting population and therefore a stronger believe in the infallibility of big government. Hence, laws changing behavior are seen as the quickest and most effective way to “mold” the culture into your preferences.
The only difference for the right with these most recent state abortion laws is there is truly a good debate about life and when a life is granted all constitutional rights, etc. But beyond abortion, the right still wants to legislate behavior more, including in the bedroom as well as in general.
I do have to give lefty progressives credit – the recognized a few generations ago that using the law alone would not be the most effective path. So they essentially took over culture and education, more recently making only one viewpoint tolerated. But the cultural influence has been going on for decades.
At one time “marriage” was establish to normalize a forward-looking behavior to “our Posterity” or evolutionary fitness. Now that “marriage” has been extended to include couplets (effectively sterile unions), what of the other orientations and organizations. With the socialization of political congruence (“=”), the law has become noticeably Pro-Choice.
Really? Can you give a few examples? As far as I can tell even those elements on the right that would in principle like to regulate people’s private behavior have given up.
Say what? Are you blaming conservatives for prohibition? Strange. As I understand it, early feminists were the drivers of prohibition, but carry on with your narratives.
FWIW, conservatives strongly believe in the Rule of Law as opposed to the Rule of Man. Your accusation that conservatives ‘want to believe the power of law is unlimited’ is a bizarre thing to say, not even sure I understand it.
You’re right, it’s a statement of diversity (i.e. color judgment) with an unprincipled apology. Conservatives are native, or center, relative to the Declaration, Constitution, and related. The right is libertarian. The left is the alternative in an American frame of reference. The early feminists were not about new rights, but uniform rights (e.g. suffrage), then there was a sectional schism and they metastasized, evolving as a political progression, with aspirations for capital and control.
Pregnancy Timeline: Fetal Development Week-by-Week with Pictures
Week 6
Ba-bum, ba-bum. It’s way too quiet for you to hear, but your baby’s tiny heart has started to beat. That heart sits inside a body that’s now almost 1/2-inch long from the top of the head to the rump — about as wide as a pencil eraser. Baby still looks like a tadpole but that won’t last for long. Human features are starting to emerge, including two eyes that come complete with lids. The lungs and digestive system are also starting to branch out, forming the organs that will help your baby breathe and eat in just a few months.
The science is straightforward, evolution (i.e. process) is even simpler to understand, the circumstances of pregnancy have been implicitly understood since time immemorial, and civilized societies have conventionally maintained a forward-looking standard to Posterity (i.e. evolutionary fitness). Our Constitution, written for both “the People” and “our Posterity”, proscribes “summary judgments” and “cruel and unusual punishment”, and was the legal standard until passage of the “Twilight Amendment”, and progressive establishment of a Pro-Choice quasi-religion and State. The religious/moral or philosophical (e.g. human rights) question is: When and by whose choice does a human life acquire and retain the right to life? The “wicked solution” is one answer.
Women have three choices. One, abstain from sex. Two, prevent conception. Sexually active women should be proactive, rather than reactive (e.g. planned or selective-child). Three, accept responsibility for the outcome of her action and choices. The edge cases (e.g. rape) have similar choices and a women who is rape-raped should be proactive or accept responsibility for a life that was conceived without her consent. Other cases, including: Down syndrome, transgender/homosexual, evolutionary defects, etc. are more complicated, and people will have to indulge a more inclusive ethics of life that is deemed worthy, or unworthy, as the case may be.
#HateLovesAbortion
Profiles in Real Courage
One of the wordsmiths needs to do a book about these girls.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mother-love-pregnant-girl-17-skips-cancer-care-save-baby-loses-life-article-1.997446
A mother’s love: Pregnant girl, 17, skips cancer care to save her baby — and loses her own life
While being admitted to the hospital, she pulled her nurse down to her at bed level and whispered into her ear. The nurse would later repeat the girl’s words to comfort her family, as their worst fears were realized a day after Jenni’s baby was born.
“She told the nurse, `I’m done, I did what I was supposed to. My baby is going to get here safe,'” said Diana Phillips, Jenni’s mother.
https://thehollywoodunlocked.com/19-year-old-mom-and-newborn-baby-both-die-after-she-delayed-her-cancer-treatment-to-save-son/
19-Year-Old Mom And Newborn Baby Both Die After She Delayed Her Cancer Treatment To Save Son
https://www.theepochtimes.com/woman-wins-against-breast-cancer-but-when-she-falls-pregnant-it-was-the-hardest-decision_2838017.html
To Fulfill Her Dream of Becoming a Mother, This Woman Stops Breast Cancer Treatment to Give Birth to Baby Girl
https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/09/21/baby-dies-just-days-after-her-mother-gave-her-own-life-by-declining-cancer-treatment
Baby dies just days after her mother gave her own life by declining cancer treatment
Given the huge spread of opinion on abortion from one extreme in NY that would allow infanticide to Alabama that would criminalized performing almost all abortions, you cannot satisfy everyone. Roe is a compromise, setting the line limiting abortions at viability and it is a good and reasonable compromise. The practical effect of going to either extreme is that such behavior highlights the value and importance of keeping Roe if we are to have an established national standard and may give the new Supreme Court appointees good reason to stay with precedent. If we do not, poor women will need subsidized bus fares to travel to the nearest state which allows abortion while in other states live breathing babies will be killed. Virtually totally banning abortion will never work when other states go as far as infanticide. Roe is the middle ground and the viability standard is flexible medically and works.
I would support a “rape or incest” exemption, if it required DNA proof and concurrent execution of the perpetrator.
After all, why allow the killing of an innocent baby if you are not going to kill the perpetrator?