Next thing you know, the almost all-white almost all-male Alabama legislators are gonna prohibit women from entering hospitals to give birth. Because, God forbid, any doctor should have to use forceps or other means to get that baby out... alive and well. Men have NO right to meddle in the affairs of women. NONE. NADA. And THAT is why we need more women in government. We do NOT have fair representation.
p.s. Bama boys, if you really want to do some good, go after every single one of the "fathers" (divorced or otherwise) to pay child support. Women are not slaves to men, and we are NOT beholden to you OR your religious beliefs.
7
“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” said Representative Rich Wingo.
What if the mother is in jail? What do you do about the child then?
Hypocrites.
2
Wake up women! These republican men want to get up inside our uteruses. We are about to loose this hard-fought right. Get ready for botched back-room abortions, and deaths because that’s what happens to women without the means to fly to Canada or other women-friendly safe-havens. That was history prior to the passing of Roe v Wade in 1973. So sad to have to return to the dark ages.
3
After I see some evidence that all those legislators who favor this law have adopted at least one orphan I'll believe more about their professions of being pro-life.
4
Although I haven't read the bill, what I see in this article suggests that there are ways to work around this proposed law. E.g., if only doctors are punished for performing abortions, perhaps PAs or NPs can be trained to do the procedures. If there is an exclusion for women at "serious risk," risk is loosely defined and may include emotional risk and other risks that are not easily disproved in court. Pro-choice organizations have a lot of work to do, and it should include operating at this tactical level to tie up the court systems in extremist states like Alabama. Challenge everything.
6
How many pro life advocates remain pro life once the child is born? Do they support WIC, SNAP, Medicaid, Child Care Assistance, Adoption Assistance, Rental Assistance, lowering prescription drug prices, immigration reform? If they don't are they really pro life?
18
Legal abortion in this country may well be doomed. So women will need to do the following: 1. Start funds to help sisters without means who want/ need abortions to get them in other countries, most of which do have legal abortion. 2. Advocate for birth control and provide information. No need to squash Planned Parenthood if abortion becomes illegal ( not that they won't try()Abortion wasn't legal when I was a young woman but we got them anyway. It's sad but we have to fight back however we can. If we can collect millions for progressive candidates we can collect thousands for foreign abortions, but we must retain control over not only our bodies but our abilities to give children that come out of our bodies the love and support they deserve. To the ramparts!
11
@Vicki lindner I am pro choice and pro life. I was a foster father pf 24 children from birth babies to teenagers/ One 15 year old girl had two back alley abortions forced by her Mother. Whatever the procedure was she still woke up during the night with nightmares from the experience. Her parents were divorced and she was not cared for.
This was in the 70s when abortion was illegal. My point is that if abortion is not legal then back ally abortions will return. I adopted 3 of those babies with medical or physical problems and were unwanted. I am 80 now and those children graduated college and have families.
4
And yet the same Republicans who equate abortion with murder have no problem resisting gun safety laws that could help prevent the murder of children in schools by gun violence. Hypocrisy of the highest order. All these Republican laws are political vehicles, designed to harm women, force a reversal of Roe v Wade (settled in 1973, by the way) and galvanize Republican voters.
16
In my dreams I am a hacker who can take a little peek into the “private” lives of many of these legislators. Hmmmm, I wonder how many of these, mostly men, have the scab of an unwanted pregnancy on their lives. Since these, mostly men, will never need to lay back, feet in the stirrups, with their heart in their throat with the emotion of the moment, I would at least like to discomfort them a teeny bit to see how often they help put women (and girls) in that situation.
9
what about smart sex ed, easy access to contraception ? these are the best tools against abortions !! the questions around late abortions should be treated separately, the US hysterical debate around abortion is a mystery to this French woman. There always be women in despair, the common ground should be, to help them and help avoid the unwanted pregnancies in the first place, or the conditions why a pregnancy is unwanted. and when there no better choice, help to provide safe conditions for abortion.
12
Classic Republican constitutional over reach. It's very doubtful the Supreme Court is going to return the country to the 1950's by overturning Roe but if they did it would be an huge own goal for the Republican party. They already have a huge problem with women and this just makes it worse.
9
I wonder how many of these pro-life advocates realize the evangelical anti-abortion movement started as a way to mobilize political support to preserve the minority ban at Bob Jones University, a fine "Good Christian" institution of higher intolerance. The idea was to use abortion, then considered a "Catholic issue," because it would be tougher to sell blatant racism. Politico has an excellent article on the history...
5
I would love to see legislation that REQUIRES that the sperm donor for these unwanted pregnancies whether they are in the life of the pregnant woman or not to have mandatory half custody of the children. Paternity testing should also be a mandatory part of this legislation. Because...anything less is clearly an agenda for control of women. So ironic to see those on the video who do not have any responsibility to bear children rush to judgement. Roe vs Wade is law. This is farce.
7
The 10th amendment reserves powers not given to the federal government to the states and to the People. This ought to include a woman's power over her own body.
When a person is forced to do something with her body against her will, that is involuntary servitude which is prohibited by the 13th amendment.
This is a plain reading of the text that so-called conservative judges ought to understand.
No person, born or otherwise, has a "right" to another person's body, to another person's pain.
Therefore, there is no "right" to be born. Birth is a gift.
8
Why not just impose an equivalent 18 year sentence on men who want to have sex in Alabama?
8
Every male who supports making abortion illegal needs to be required to have a vasectomy.
14
Why is it "conservative" to interfere with a woman and a family's right to privacy? Why is it legal to waste the court's time and people's money on cases that violate the separation of church and state? Why are men who buy legislatures spending all their time consumed with the debate over the right to bodily integrity of women? The majority of people in the United States support a woman's right to abortion. Full stop. Abortions after the second trimester are typically due to diseases that are horrific and limit the life of the child or endanger the life of the mother. Does a legislature have the right to interfere in tragic family conditions? Why? Are they proposing to help pay for the medical care of that family? Why all the forced births at the same time people complain of immigration and the so-called leader claims the country is "full up". Keep spinning this, Alabama, stay poor. Go nowhere unless you're a woman with any common sense. I'd look into moving north, out of the slave states. But who knows? Maybe this is the level of Handmaiden oppression the Republican care-nothing party aims to bring to the whole country.
13
Can Alabama just check out and do its own thing formally as a country? I feel like the rest of us can move on better without them.
7
@Sarah: They did try that once. Sometimes I think that - except for the fact that African-Americans would still be legally enslaved there to this day - our country would have been better off if the Southern states had been permitted to secede. There are some nice places to visit in that part of the world, but ...
1
The reason Repubs a fighting so hard to make abortion illegal is to show that they are not are hard hearted as most of their policy positions may indicate. Yes, they are against funding decent schools, yes they are against the social safety net, yes they are against universal health care including maternity care, but look they shout we are against abortion and want to save all those unborn babies.
4
@lester ostroy Well, c'mon. If we don't have a horde of unwanted, unaffordable, unparented babies, how will we justify keeping our execution chambers open?
3
The utter immorality and hypocrisy of the anti-choice movement is astounding. I'd love to know what these religious extremists are doing about gun control, a scourge that's killing actual biologically viable children every single day. Nothing--that's what these moral vacuums are doing! Shame on them.
We have to get out the vote in 2020. The future of this country and the lives of American children depend on the sane and principled of us wresting power away from the GOP.
10
The question isn’t whether or not a fetus is a “person.” It’s whether a woman is a person.
Clearly, in Alabama and other states, women are somewhat less a person than a bundle of cells with active rudimentary heart tissue.
16
Alabama, tack fully funded pre-school onto your bill if you’re serious....and encorporate additional guarantees about the quality of life on offer in Alabama. As a state that already struggles with high mortality rates it seems you’re legislating on the wrong end of the birth canal.
10
If trump and republicans hate poor people, and Alabama is
a 'poor state', why do they want more poor people to be born
there? Rich people have access to all kinds of reproductive
health. Who pays for the prenatal, birth and postnatal medical
care of all these poor people?
6
I wish there were some way to know how many of the male politicians voting to limit abortion access had relationships with women that resulted in abortion, or how many 1had suggested to a wife or girlfriend that they get an abortion.
Representative Tim Murphy, anyone?
7
Clearly abortion rights--like vaccination--have been a victim of their own success. Alabamans have forgotten what it was like before abortion was legal. Unfortunately, if Roe is no longer the law of the land, women will die--and then the birthers will have no one to thank but themselves for that nightmare.
5
Roe vs Wade was ultimately about privacy. A woman has a right to privacy in the pursuit of her health and life, in the interaction between her and her doctors.
It protects women from the abusive intrusion into their private lives by others, a constitutional right to have others mind their own business.
9
Do not worry. Trump is determined to start a war...probably against Iran but perhaps Venezuala or maybe Cuba or China. This will clear the USA of the uneducated population without medical care or decent employment. The anti choice crowd just wants to produce cannon fodder for your military. After years of not watching TV I sort of watch it and I it is truly amazing how much Ametican militarism permeates your television shows. The military serves a function to clear away unwanted males and some females from the populace.
3
@bcer It wasn't thus when every president had served in uniform. This abortion of our political heritage started with Reagan, who had spent the War cavorting with starlets in Hollywood, along with the laughable coward John Wayne, while the real men, like Eisenhower and Kennedy, were out fighting the Axis powers.
2
Although being a republican, I wish things would stay the way they are. Even if safe sex is practiced, things happen. And for some people (including myself), birth control is not an option. We should choose what we can and cannot do with our bodies. If someone is simply not ready, they should not be forced to have a child. Children need emotional and financial support that some can't give them. Our government is just looking for things to fix at this point. Don't fix what isn't broken. Of course I want to have children, but I have a plan of when. The course of my life shouldn't be altered over a broken condom.
14
@T. There are several states that are not Alabama. Some are even geographically and intellectually removed from "Dixie."
2
The anti-choice body led by the Republicans are gleefully attempting to pass these horrid laws and bring these battles state by state. The late John McCain, an anti-choice republican senator, fantasized and said as much. With this Supreme Court his followers and ilk might just get their wish. What we need to protect a women right is a federal constitutional amendment guaranteeing
this specific right. But that would take a whole new generation, a movement, and that would involve all new leaders and lawmakers. Considering the entrenched culture thats a tall order indeed.
A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. My mother has five pregnancies. Two of us lived. Each miscarriage was emotionally devastating to her. And that was without having to worry about being accused of murder.
This thing will result in dead women, because doctors won’t perform even medically necessary procedures. And since the GOP cuts funding for WIC and education every chance they get, all it means is more and more children born into poverty with no chance to escape.
Meanwhile the same pols who push this will fly their mistresses to NY to take care of their little “problems.”
12
@ JLW
Indeed, I’m sure former Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA) is not the only anti-choice hypocrite.
3
"Abortion rights" seems to me an absurd expression. How could a person have a "right" on the life of other human being? Human beings are subjects of rights, never objects of others' rights.
1
@Just me
It does make it hard to understand how the law could try to enforce a fetus's "right" to the use of it's host body, doesn't it?
1
It is days like this where I become cynical. I donate significant amounts of money to Planned Parenthood to help maintain the right to abortions. But why?
If Alabama voters think it is a good idea that women can't choose their destiny, that all babies, wanted or not, need to be born, that there will be women dying getting back-alley abortions, then perhaps one should let them. And if a sizeable majority in Alabama thinks that access to abortion should be legal THEN THEY HAVE TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY.
3
@TT I'd also vote with my feet if I were a woman of child-bearing age:
1. Move out of Alabama if I already lived there.
2. Decide not to go to school, work there.
3. Don't travel there.
That way, I will not be caught in a sticky situation in a unsympathetic state. I would also advise the same of any man or woman who has a daughter, spouse, sister, etc.
7
Isn't it odd that all those pro-gun Republicans claim that mass shootings are due to mental health problems and that we have to do more to address these but when it comes to abortion rights, they don't consider the mental health of the mother as being a potential reason for an abortion.
It seems they are very selective about when they consider mental illness to be a "real" problem and when they consider it simply as an excuse.
8
The rest of the World is moving forward and the United States is moving backwards. I encourage all young people to try and leave the United States and seek a saner, more progressive place to live.
6
Shouldn’t we rather encourage them to stay and make this a saner, better place to live?
Alabama should look to improve their revenue and not waste massive amounts of money to just be in the press. There are real issues in front of the legislators for the voters they serve. This is not one of them.
1
Hurry up and get on with the vote. Sense at last for unborn life.
1
Finally the pro life movement is seeing positive results in their hard work all these years. Thank you Alabama for taking this daring step to prohibit abortion which will not be popular with some of the US citizens. You do have your many supporters who agree with your position.
More and more people are finally seeing that the life within the womb is a baby and want to protect it through all stages of development right up until birth. We have come a long way since the pro life movement started in 1974 and sometimes it seemed as though we were at a standstill with all sorts of barriers put in our path. But with this Alabama bill about to be passed our efforts have not been in vain.
9
@KMW So who is going to take care of these unwanted children and women forced to carry a pregnancy to term resenting the fetus in a country with virtually no safety net? You?
189
@KMW. What you are saying is that the biological condition of pregnancy precludes a woman's right to the 14th Amendment, which, by the way, says that the right to "life, liberty and property" belongs to people born (repeat "born") in the United States. That was later extended to all persons whether born here or born elsewhere. But "born." Women had the right to an abortion in US and UK common law until the late 19th century. Alabama's rejection of this history in favor of the fantasy that a fetus the moral and political equal of a rational conscious human being is destructive of more than reproductive rights. It condemns all women regardless of background to the will of a politically self-interested legislators. Their choice and their lives count for nothing. This means that women's bodies are no longer their own. Women's bodies then belong to the state, which would regulate reproductive processes by policing pregnancy. E.g., if a woman has a miscarriage, she would have to show cause that she did nothing to bring on the miscarriage. Without the womb police guarding the "rights" of fetuses, we are back to pre-Roe rules of rich women getting abortions in Sweden, middle class women in Mexico and poor women by some quack. Abortions are necessary for women to finally reclaim their bodies along with reliable birth control and scientifically based sex education. Alabama is showing us the way back to a dark age. And, you are applauding state control of women's bodies.
208
@KMW
Not so fast. Won't the exciting part be when we can start throwing abortion providers into prison? Also, nothing measures "pro-life" success like a few teenaged girls dying from back-alley abortions. Last, but not least, we have to have real, measurable outcomes for unwanted children living in poverty and neglect and eventually increasing the crime rate. Let's get results, people!
129
To Pro-Choice Leaders, please get your act together and start making some compelling arguments to protect our rights. You can start by googling "Infant Mortality Rates, Rankings by State", then maybe point out in your rare and occasional press release that nearly all of these very states where so-called pro-lifer legislators are banning the abortions to protect the lives of the unborn, ARE THE VERY STATES THAT HAVE THE WORST RATES in infant mortality. So, pro-choice leaders, can you try to fight stupid with some compelling counterpunches?
19
That this would come from Alabama is no surprise to the educated world. Holier than thou, playing favor to the Bible thumpers. Choice is also anti-abortion, because it's choice. As Pamela Harris just said " Show me one law that has to do with men's bodies" Stop religious bigotry that really underpins this issue. Choice should remain choice.
11
Republican policy is to support the right to life until birth. Once the baby is out of the womb, it's on its own.
10
Are rapists - or all fathers - simultaneously by this bill required to provide child-support financing to age of majority?
If not, why not?
22
So, practically ALABAMA is pro-birth but NO
PRO-LIFE...
12
If the presence of a detectable heartbeat or any similarly crude criteria is decisive for determining that a living thing is a person deserving of the full protection of the law against being killed, that will at a stroke destroy all meat industries, who daily slaughter millions of living things with very detectable heartbeats and every other sign of being healthy living things.
Apparently all those cattle, pigs, chickens and so on are also possessed of full personhood that makes them capable of suffering murder if the reasoning behind these abortion bills is to be taken seriously.
9
Wait for Trumpists and republicans to go down in flames in 2020. The unsavory elements of the society are making their last effort to turn things back to medieval ages. Like a candle that shines brightly just before it dies.
6
Here’s how this goes:
The fetus must be protected, so a girl or woman must not do (be allowed to do) anything that may harm the fetus.
Certain foods may cause harm, so bar females from eating them (cannot order in restaurants or buy in grocery stores); roller coasters may cause harm, and as the State will not be able to ensure that any female from 12 to 50 is not currently pregnant on any given day (and it’s not cost effective for amusement parks to administer pregnancy tests), bar females from rides; physical activities can be bad for a fetus, so skiing hiking, biking should be barred and any physical jobs as well. Stress can be harmful for a fetus, so females from 12 to 50 should be barred from stressful jobs-being doctors, lawyers, bankers, brokers and most especially politicians and elected officials (campaigning is way too stressful). As many careers are barred to females, spending money to educate them to any higher level is less cost effective and will limit the spots available to males who can take those highly stressful jobs, so limits to higher education should be put in place for females (after 50 they will be free to go to medical school and become doctors in their 60s, or lawyers etc)
Women spend 35 years bleeding, 9 months in pregnancy, and 14 hours in excruciating labor and delivery to build and produce every human being in this country and on this planet.
What thankless, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic cons these legislators are who play god for votes.
43
Right to Life. Please pay half the costs of raising a child and you will see a decrease in abortions.
17
Do these measure also deal with the doctor's office-advised abortions for privileged couples who have conceived multiple births and they assume one or more is "in trouble" ? What is the difference between a doctor's claim of an unknown variable that is a "wait and see" and an expectant mother who knows what's best for her? Is the main difference economics? A large part of the abortion dynamic is a dark, mean-spirited poverty line.
18
If you ask me, a well traveled and a highly educated feminist, no woman below 25 should have kids unless she is very rich, is in a stable relationship and comes from a well functioning family. More than half the population of the world, including the US, should not be having kids. Most people make awful parents. Look at the world we are in: thugs, bullies, arrogant morons, idiots, emotionally unbalanced and unselfaware, poorly communicating people are the majority. The truly great ones are anxious or depressed. How do first rates come up among third rates? Abortion is a necessity for quality. Women supporters got it right. Sex and pregnancy should not be tied together. Otherwise every male loser that women sleep with will pass his DNA on.
16
I am so glad I live in a city where democrats and liberals dominate. I couldn't stand to live among republicans.
27
And what about the men who get these women pregnant? Nothing is ever mentioned about them. If states want to impose draconian laws against women and their health care providers, then there should be mandatory clauses in these laws requiring the "fathers" to get vasectomies. Once men start realizing they can also be penalized, then maybe 1) they will start using condoms or 2) stop writing misogynistic laws.
30
Alabama is a lovely state, with many progressive people. My parents and most of my family were born there. But any state that seeks to ban a federal law, Roe V. Wade, and would take away a woman's right over her own body by outlawing abortion under any circumstances, should go ahead and secede again, into the backward, state's rights, creationism-teaching Theocracy it so desperately wants to be.
I'm glad my family moved to Georgia when I was born. Oh, wait! Ga. Governor Brian Kemp just signed a bill that women who have abortions would be subject to life imprisonment or the death penalty!?! At this point, this is political grandstanding. But to think that Roe V. Wade could actually someday be overturned by good ole beer-drinking, accused molester Bret Kavanagh!
I love my state and country. But this is an outrageous insult to every woman, who deserves autonomy over her own body. If men could get pregnant, this wouldn't be an issue.
27
Let's not forget that it's Alabama and suitable allowances must be made given the backwardness of many of its inhabitants, and especially it's government. Challenges to SCOTUS decisions tend to not fare well on appeal. Alabama's legislators are not too dumb to know this (perhaps they are), particularly those who have successfully made it through law school. Ttheir primary motivation may be to play to the base.
2
I'm just glad my stereotypes of Alabama are so spot on.
12
The proposed law states that abortions are still permitted if the mother’s health is in danger. Then abortions should still be allowed in the case of rape, incest, severe fetal defects, or any contributing factor that a pregnancy may impact the mental health of the mother in a negative manner if carried to term.
5
Check out Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?" When searching for the lowest denominator of responsibility and intelligence who we'd fear most if they had a nuclear weapon, his ultimate example . . .
"We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb!"
5
It is not a coincidence that laws that would shackle women are being introduced only in states of the former Southern Confederacy. It takes more than a century and a half for a population to breed out bias and ignorance.
12
Whoops,what about Ohio? Or South Dakota? How insulting. I’d like to challenge you to a duel.
4
@Mike Murray MD
It's not just the Southern states. Ohio just passed a "Heartbeat" bill, and a state congressman has proposed outlawing all medical treatments that might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, and demanding that ectopic pregnancies be treated by surgically removing the fertilized egg from the fallopean tube, and then surgically implanting it in the uterine wall. These people are crazy.
18
@Mike Murray MD
While the south definitely takes the cake with these types of things, the general backwardness is a feature of rural areas. Even in some of the most liberal states.
5
A woman's right to health doesn't allow her to trample on the rights of an unborn human being. The Supreme Court and most states have mainly acknowledged this by outlawing abortions in the third trimester. Why? Because doctors agree that the unborn baby is fully viable at this stage of pregnancy. By 8 to 10 weeks, neural connections are formed in a baby's brain which allow him or her to feel pain. Knowing a baby can feel paint as early as two months in gestation makes unconscionable for anyone to support abortions after this point. Why is a murderer charged with a double homicide when he kills a pregnant woman? Because that child's life matters. You who object are morally bad people and you lack the empathy, humanity, ethics and morality to speak intelligently and thoughtfully on this subject.
4
Thanks for the education and mansplaining. No woman wants to abort in the 3rd trimester. I can't believe that we are still talking about this.
22
Please provide the peer reviewed journal article that supports your statement regarding weeks of gestation, nervous system development and the ability to feel pain
18
If a child life mattered, Pro Lifers (ie Pro Birthers) would be marching on Washington for the funding of prenatal care, good nutrition programs for babies and mothers, affordable childcare, available preschool, better public schools, lower (by 3/4) student loans, better housing, job training, etc etc etc.
We don’t care about children in this country once a baby is born, it its parent’s problem. The Pro Life movement was promoted in the ‘70s as a way to gain ranks for Evangelicals and gain votes for Republicans. It was a political self-serving strategy. It had nothing to do with children’s lives.
Once those espousing the “rights” of fetuses get their gold star and pat on the back, they skip home congratulating themselves on their “morality”, but they do nothing of the hard work and effort - and money - it takes to actually give a child a life.
We are a cruel, thankless country.
28
The point at which a fertilized egg becomes a legally defined "person" varies from religion to religion. Among some religious groups, such as Roman Catholicism or Protestant Evangelicalism, personhood begins at the moment of fertilization; thus according to their beliefs, abortion is forbidden at almost every stage of human development. These people have the right to follow their religion and avoid abortions at all stages. Other religions, however, interpret personhood as beginnig at a much later stage, indeed in some cases close to birth. Followers of such religions should not be obligated to forgo all abortions, as it would force them to adopt the specific strictures of religions to which they do not adhere. This would be counter to the First Amendment's Establishment Clause that forbids the State from forcing a particular religion on everyone. It would be similar to the State forbidding everyone from eating pork, a religious restriction limited to practicing Jews and Muslims.
18
I can’t believe this. We’re heading back to the dark ages . Since when does a cluster of cells trump the life of a fully formed woman with wants, needs, and a desire to decide her own future? We can make our own meaningful decisions. Doesn’t the right always want LESS interference with people’s lives???? Less government??? Then why the law restricting women to decide? Clearly, women don’t matter more than the ideal of populating the Earth with more and more children that more and more parents don’t have the physical or mental means to raise them.
25
Next step: Outlawing condoms. After all, the purpose of intercourse is to procreate life, so defeating that purpose must be against God's will.
16
Look at the young man in the purple tie. He knows.
Banning abortion is another way to demean women. Period.
First, the constitution prohibited women from voting for over 100 years. After many years of fight, got the right to vote.
Second, the decision to ban abortion will be made by individuals that will NEVER become pregnant.
Finally, the individuals encouraging on abortion ban, the religious leaders, will NEVER become pregnant. From his Holy Father, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, ....
Give women right to choose. Give women freedom.
17
This is another example of how legislators throughout the nation increasingly pander to pressure groups that support extreme measures which lack widespread support among the general public. Although Alabamians probably are more likely to favor this legislation than are citizens of many other states, I find it difficult to believe that anywhere near a majority of people in Alabama support this measure. When I read nearly a hundred comments to the Birmingham News article about today's events in the Alabama legislature, most of which presumably were written by Alabamians, I found almost none that supported this legislation. Most were strikingly similar to the comments I have read in response to the analogous New York Times article.
15
A fetus is not a person.
13
Thank goodness I don't live in Alabama, but I feel for every woman who does. So a father could rape his daughter which results in unwanted pregnancy (incest,) and the daughter has to carry that product of incest to term? Despicable. Torture. Cruel. This is an obscene curtailment of human freedom and rights.
Don't like abortions? Don't have one, and mind your own business.
28
Sometimes I find it hard to fathom that I am living on the same planet let alone country as many of these folks in the Deep South.
This abortion issue is clearly a proxy for something else of which these men (and they are 99% men) are unaware. Is the real purpose the need to control others, to keep women in their “place”, to help deny that their religious beliefs lack any grounding in fact, to gain attention or notoriety that is otherwise lacking? Hard to tell. I can tell you one thing for sure, it is not from a heartfelt concern for human life in its totality.
These politicians do clearly want to distract from the fact that Alabama ranks at the bottom of health, education and public welfare but they are doing virtually nothing about that.
I participated in the women’s march in Washington after Trump was inaugurated. Some unhinged “Christian” with crazy a hat, posters and a bull horn was frantically trying to gain attention. I was surrounded by women, who had clearly faced this before, chanting “My body, my choice.” That’s it isn’t it? In the first trimester, the Supreme Court has ruled this is a woman’s own personal choice.
I believe the goals of the “pro-life” movement are not stated: they are fundamentally about disempowering women, a last ditch effort to assert patriarchal control, and the imposition of anachronistic religious ideologies (which are on a serious downward trajectory in the west) on others.
15
When men can become pregnant and carry a child to term, lets have this conversation. Until men tame the responsibility not to have sex with any moving person impregnating them, lets have the conversation. When people care about those children who lack healthcare, education, nutrition and loving homes, lets not have the conversation. Hypocrisy reigns among those who proclaim to be pro-life before birth, but agnostic once a child has come into the world. Heal thyself first before declaring authority over others.
16
The resemblance between Christian fundamentalists and Muslim fundamentalists becomes closer each day. Both want a merger of the state and their religion--and both regard women as subordinate to men.
The biggest difference is that Muslim fundamentalists are at least honest about their agenda and their beliefs. Christian fundamentalist anti-abortion zealots want to ban abortion because they believe that some kind of entity places something they call a "soul" somewhere in the cell wall of a fertilized human egg at the moment of fertilization.
But they won't admit it to outsiders. Instead they resort to meaningless memes like "life begins at the moment of conception." Nor will they face the fact that identical twins and chimeras are not formed at the moment of conception.
But above all they lie about the fact that they intend to impose a purely religious law upon a secular country without a state religion.
Instead they talk about heartbeats and viability outside the womb. Interestingly, Christ never said a word about abortions. The Bible only says that a baby gets legal rights after surviving outside the womb for 30 days--very practical in a non-tech primitive society.
So this isn't just a war on women. It's a war on our constitutionally secular society...and on honesty.
29
And where are these legislators once a baby is born into abject poverty, potentially exposed to poor health, poor nutrition, physical harm and the many other risks that so many unwanted births invite? This is not pro-life. It is coercive birth.
23
So, just how many of these righteous zealots in the Alabama legislature are men?
10
I can't help but think of the article in the NYT a month or so ago about the Justice Department's report about the horrific, inhumane conditions in the state prisons in Alabama. I commented at the time how, not surprisingly, Alabama is one of the more "pro-life" states. Wow! How far extremists will go to push their hypocritical agendas. Let's be clear: stuff like this comes from the same kind of religious fundamentalism that drives all kinds of reactionary and repressive laws in many nations that are far from the beacons of justice and liberty will like to hold ourselves as. This isn't about protecting life, it's about controlling other people (i.e., women).
17
If you want to end abortion, fund Planned Parenthood. That is far more effective than bans, which only forces people to seek illegal and dangerous abortions which can end in death. In other words, abortion bans promote unnecessary deaths, whereas family planning services including contraception prevent the need for abortion.
31
The myriad hypocrisies surrounding the anti-abortion movement become kaleidoscopic when examined in the context of Alabama, which currently boasts one of the worst infant mortality rates in the US, not to mention rating rock bottom on virtually every other quality of life index among all states, including - notably - having one of the highest percentages of women living in poverty the US. Oh, and needless to say, it also ranks as one of the worst for violence against women.
22
Incorrect: “At the end of the day, we are talking about a life here.”
Correct: At the end of the day, we are talking about women's autonomy.
Women cannot have autonomy if the state compels them to bear children against their will.
At the end of the day, we are also talking about cynical manipulation of voters at women's expense to promote Republicans' true agenda, which is to (maintain political power and) funnel money from the poor to the wealthy by cutting taxes and cutting regulations that benefit workers and everyone who is alive. Abortion is the Trojan horse. Cutting regulations permits exploitation of workers, etc. Most people would oppose those policies because most people are not wealthy, so Republicans disguise them with the cloak of abortion. Is it clear to you yet?
21
Crystal clear to me. Now try explaining that to the people who vote against their interests.
12
To the Alabama Legislators
By trying to impose your views on the women (and doctors, husbands, etc) of your state, you are arbitrating between your citizens and God, essentially putting yourselves In Persona Christie. If you are without sin, feel free to cast stones. If not, don’t.
11
More proof of the republic party's insistence that every zygote be born. No exceptions whatsoever - not to save the mother's life, not for rape or incest. All must be born.
After birth, you're on your own. And if you can't make it, do the "right thing" - die and get out of the way.
18
New York Times, Since when is it "far reaching" to protect human life? Was it far reaching for those who were opposed to Nazi's murdering millions of Jews during WWII? We know based on modern science, and ultra-sound technology when life beings, at conception. Yet, your headline minimizes murder and proposes that it is "far reaching" to simply take a stand to protect pre-born babies in the womb, fully human, with beating hearts, and feeling emotion including pain.
2
I've noticed that the loudest and most extreme abortion opponents are men. Guys, it ain't your body, so it ain't your call...and yeah, I'm a guy.
32
@Terrance
You appear to be confused. Pre-born babies (sic) do not feel emotions or pain.
I am not simply some entity called 'the womb.' Fetuses are wholly dependent on women's bodies and pregnancy affects a woman's entire physiology.
Moreover, abortion is not "murder" because a) fetuses aren't persons b) abortion is legal and c) women have the right to determine who uses their bodies.
Finally, this law is blatantly unconstitutional-- in fact, that's its purpose. To challenge Roe v. Wade.
I hope that clears it all up for you and explains to you why Alabama's law is far reaching.
1
Alabama does not allow for limitation or termination of a rapist's parental rights.
Think about that.
35
From the state that proudly brought you Roy Moore comes a bill to let you know they can actually sink lower.
24
Abortions happen, no matter the threats or the law. So, thanks, Alabama, for showing us the way back to a dark, nastier time in history, during which women suffered and even died at the hands of "back alley" abortionists.
21
If men could get pregnant, there'd be stirrups and a speculum on the altar of every church in the world. Abort superstition, and exhort rational faith!
14
I got pregnant with my husband. It was planned. About 5 months in, we find out I've got AFLP - look it up - "significant risk of maternal or fetal mortality" is what I read when I looked for what it was. It's my choice - and only my choice - if I want to risk my life to give birth.
My sister gets pregnant. She gets right up to delivery, and gets preeclampsia - another potentially deadly complication.
Abortion is about a woman's right to decide if she wants to risk her life and her health to carry a baby. You can't know early, you may not have any warning at all if you are going to have a complication that may kill or cripple you. This can only ever be a choice, up to viability. This is a medical question, not something for anyone else to decide.
My daughter and I did get through that pregnancy, thanks to lots of monitoring and good doctors - something not everyone is able to have, particularly in a state with as high a rate of mortality as Alabama.
41
I do hope that nobody will challenge the law in court. It will be interesting to study how Alabama deals with this disastrous bill.
Prohibition many decades ago has shown what happens if your forbid the permissible.
It shall be Alabama's problem. I understand that women will suffer but the public will need to see how Alabama will struggle and in all likelihood rescind this prohibition within 20 years. Too many doctors in jail; too many women doing it illegally; too many deaths; every miscarriage now a crime scene needed to be investigated e.t.c.
And Alabama will not exactly be a magnet for businesses to invest.
11
As the articles alludes, the legislators who will pass this bill don't actually care about the details of it. They and the legislators of other 'no-choice' states are simply throwing legislative spaghetti against the wall hoping the US Supreme Court decides that one of them is properly done and, thus, legalizes these inhuman, draconian laws.
13
Incredible how regressive the Deep South is becoming
Hopefully next Election Day the voters will send remove the politicians who are so eager to dominate women and to severely limit their right to choose
17
@Andrew If you think that will happen, I've a bridge for sale.
3
Easily duped people get incensed when they hear lies about Sharia law being imposed on cities and states, while this anti-abortion attacks on women is real.
33
15 percent of Alabamans are illiterate. The state is the sixth poorest. You'd think the legislators could do more than grandstand and force a child raped by her uncle to have a baby...
39
They might be slightly more paternalistic towards women in the south, but not by that much. So why the heartbeat bills in the south and not elsewhere? It is racism, not misogyny. This is a way to attack the black community while pretending to care about babies. They deny them healthcare through refusing Medicaid expansion which would cover birth control pills, and then ensure they stay poor through unplanned pregnancies.
23
Mostly white, mostly men, mostly "super christians" telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Disgusting.
The idea that their version of religion should push everything and everyone out in a country that professes no state religion and freedom to worship or not, is unbelievably unlawful. They do not care. If they want to force women who can't afford a private doctor (which will always continue everywhere) to use hangers and die, I guess no one can stop them. Still, it's infuriating. Who says their version of "christianity" is right? They do. Shame on the women who are on board with this thinking, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.
Further, why are the men let off the hook if a woman accidentally gets pregnant? (It happens.) Why, if abortion is such a crime, are the men who got the women pregnant also not going to go to jail if there is an abortion? Did the women impregnate themselves? Oh, that's right, she can just say no. Except when she does all the correct things and gets pregnant anyway.
And, if they are so "pro-life" then who is going to pay for the health care of the mother for 9 months, for the birth and afterwards, for the baby's life? The idea that a fetus is an "unborn person" with rights has been cooked up over the past several decades by the so-called religious right as a propaganda tool and, guess what, it worked!
Most women come to abortion reluctantly. Those few who do not, will find a way, law or no. This is just wrong.
32
“At the end of the day, we are talking about a life here.” said Ms.Lathan, the chairwoman of the Alabama Republican party.
"That way, once the child is born, we can make it practically impossible for it to receive early education or good health care, and of course, make it impossible for a single woman to raise the child right on a working persons salary. We had to save the life, so we can torture it. Sort of like when we destroy villages to save them. "
Well, she didn't actually say that second paragraph. But the hypocrisy is there for all to see, in evangelicals, and Republican policy nationally and in Alabama
35
This is Alabama living up to its lowest stereotype. A failed and backward state.
I wonder how the morning after pill figures into their "argument" against women? If they were really against abortion, wouldn't that pill be in a vending machine in every high school, bar, train station, public park, city bus, drug store, McDonald's, church, ...you get the point, Alabama. You're lying to women and to yourselves.
It's not about abortion at all. It's about controlling women's bodies, behavior, possibilities, education, income, political power----and contributing nothing to their ability to provide and care for unlimited and unwanted children.
Get ready for a huge spike in crime coming your way in 18 years....
46
Women's rights are human rights. Taking away a woman's right to have an abortion is taking away her human rights. This is taking America backward and into the dark ages. The Supreme Court settled this and their ruling should be upheld. For those women with unintended pregnancy that don't believe in abortion - they don't have to have one. They can give their child up for adoption or raise the child. Women have a right to make a choice about whether to continue an unwanted pregnancy or not. Old white men in legislators should not be making these decisions for young women in this country.
49
The real issue here is about the access to a safe medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.
If one does not believe in having an abortion, then your choice becomes carrying full term and keep your child ,love your child and watch them grow.... or
Carry full term and give the child up for adoption and move on with your life.
If one chooses to have a a safe medical procedure to terminate the pregnancy, then she should have access to this medical procedure, not denied through any legislation's by any governing body. This is not the role of government to decide everyone's personal choice whether to have access for this procedure.
28
I will never visit this state, ever.
44
@Jordan Davies. I made that decision long ago. Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and numerous other backward states are on the list as well.
18
@KathrineI don't want any of my tax dollars to go there.
5
Alabama's indifference to their living children proves one thing - this is about controlling women, and is only about controlling women.
45
A child is not a fetus and a fetus is not a child. But all of this is a religious view of life begins at conception. As a religious belief is not a basis for law under our Constitution, this will be stricken down
Although not the Constitutional basis for Roe v Wade, The SCOTUS in a 2014 reproductive rights case, Hobby Lobby, held that life at conception was a "deeply held religious belief" 75% of us have contrary religious view.
16
If a fetus is a person at 6 weeks pregnant, is that when the child support starts? Is that also when you can’t deport the mother because she’s carrying a US citizen? Can I insure a 6 week fetus and collect if I miscarry? Just figuring if we’re going here we should go all in. @carlissc via Twitter
60
The extremists are in charge. They'll probably ban music next.
22
@Phil M: And dancing. Of course.
7
I have mixed feelings about abortion, but the idea of forcing a victim of rape or incest to bear the resulting child is just despicable. It is hard to imagine something more psychologically harmful than being asked about your pregnancy for months and having to lie or respond it was the result of a rape.
27
I think I'll cancel my plans to relocate to Alabama.
19
Fascism. That's what this is - the Republican party at least in the old confederacy is a fascist organisation.
32
Regulate the uteruses....and regulate the testicles.
What's good for the women is good for the men.
29
Vasectomy prevents abortion.
25
I feel sorrow and horror for the daughters of these men pushing for a ban on rape exceptions. We can only assume that if one of those girls were to be forcibly penetrated and their trauma was compounded by becoming pregnant, their fathers would force them to keep that baby. Their fathers would demand that for 9 months they go through morning sickness, limited mobility, sore breasts, possible dangerous complications, being "the pregnant girl" at school, the stress of bringing a baby into the world without a father to help, etc. Then the labor- hours and possibly days of the most mind bending pain you've ever experienced complete with epidural shots to the spine, vaginal tearing, a possible C-section that takes many weeks to heal, possible postpartum depression and so on. Trauma compounded by trauma compounded by the knowledge that your father values an ideology over you.
These men do not see full human beings when they look at their precious girls. They see vessels of an untenable ideal, guardians of their parent's reputation or, worse, bastions of virtue who will never make mistakes or be in complicated situations. These men do not understand woman and they do not see the heavy price we pay to perpetuate the human condition. Such short sighted fools should not be allowed in office and they should not be allowed to make decisions that will impact millions of women and girls. Pray for the daughters born to these misogynists.
37
We Blue state pro-choice folks are being baited by the Red states to force the case to the Trump Supreme Court. Don’t fall for it!
Let’s keep the Blue states pro-choice. If citizens of the South and fly over states wish to roll back the clock, then so be it. After all, isn’t that what States Rights aRe about?
I’m sick of being lectured by pols in deep Southern drawls .
24
A woman's right to an abortion is settled law. Yet they continue to waste time and taxpayers dollars on this. They should all be impeached.
32
I suspect that what really happened was that the men of Alabama realized that they were going to be on the hook - not for an abortion - but for 20 years of child support and that they screamed bloody murder to their representatives.
It's a very different matter when religions and elected representatives make the lives of women miserable.... versus the making of the lives of men miserable.
Please remember, part of the populace that was perfectly happy with abortion - was men, who were delighted to NOT have to have a shotgun wedding or be shackled with child support just because they had a one-night stand.
Men are now realizing that they are the ones to have to pay, that their right-wing Brothers are going to demand DNA samples and an open check-book for decades.
Aw.
Are the men finally realizing that THEY are the ones who are going to have to pay?
Had enough of your Republican masters yet, boys?
Boy, we sure have....
14
Oh brother. For all the problems we might have in California, I am forever grateful it's not the deep South.
37
To many, this was/is the whole reason for Beerman being on the Supreme Court.
13
Alabama...a state I’m determined never to visit! Are there corporations headquartered in Alabama? ...I’ll boycott them!
14
Mary you are on the right track. Why not adapt the techniques of the very smart LGBTQ Community and activists who brought us Marriage Equality? If all those who believe that the life of a pregnant woman IS a life were to vote with their pocketbooks - really do the research and refuse to step foot or spend a penny in the many states with these misplaced and misogynist views - it would start affecting the businesses that fund elections for the very men and some women (!) passing these draconian laws.
I want to rant & rail against these people as much as the rest of the others writing against these laws; but I encourage everyone to focus energy and action on strategies for change. The LGBTQ community blazed a path. Why not adapt some of their ideas? Let’s be smart, not just outraged.
4
@Mary Sampson
Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz have plants in Alabama.
2
I'd hate to be in those Republicans' shoes when Susan Collins fires off another letter expressing serious concern.
9
Alabama almost delivered Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate. Roy Moore. Alabama.
20
Back to the good-old-boy’s days in which woman were treated as disposable egg shells to be thrown out with the garbage (after which loved ones suffered tear filled funerals). Those to most live on in the horror of it all some children that want nothing more than for mommy to come home to them. And a father who cannot bear the thought of turning his back on his one and only that he pledged beyond all others:
"To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
Anyone like to be the children’s daddy going home and telling the kids why mommy is never coming home because others have insisted in law that another is more important than their mommy and that all of them together are going to have to just know that’s true too?
How further sad it would be if some right winger would in such griping times step in and tell the woman’s family what is what and for mommy the jig is up.
5
Where's the same concern about protecting the lives of school children from being mowed down by wacko shooters?
Anti-abortion zealots who feel they are acting out of religious convictions must not truly believe in God, or they wouldn't feel God needs help in doing the judging and punishing.
23
One has to ask how many unwanted or severely handicapped children these hand-wringing hypocrites have brought into their homes? Show of hands please? I thought so.
13
I can’t manage a dispassionate, civil response to this. I just want to sell Alabama back to the British—it doesn’t really even matter as long as it’s not Russia—as soon as possible. The people advancing this notion have yet to walk on hind legs.
21
What is wrong with these people?
14
I don't know what's worse, being forced to bring a child into this world or being forced to raise that child in Alabama.
47
This bill does not even allow exceptions in cases of a 12 year old being raped by her father forcing her to deliver her son/daughter who would also be her brother/sister. What kind of sick minds dream up such laws?
34
So a one week cell bundle is a "person"; a corporation is a "person" but an ovulating female is not.
Lovely.
48
I have a question for the righteous pro-lifers. The military exists for the express purpose of killing people, right? And don't tell me that collateral damage in the form of women and children doesn't happen all the time. So, if you are so ardently pro-life that you wish to remove the rights of women to make that choice, then surely you are appalled at the prospect of supporting an organization solely dedicated to ending life? Right? Yeah, I thought not. Jesus doesn't care if you kill brown babies overseas, right?
13
@lostyouth
Jesus also doesn't care if you kill an actual person here either, as long as it's with one of those god-given-right-to-own guns, as many as we want and whatever kind we want.
Right, Alabama?
13
Alabama: we are not going back.
22
Isn't this the same state that squashes sex education, birth control, and family planning clinics?
Do nothing to discourage unwanted pregnancies.. and then make it a crime for the mother and doctor to conduct an abortion by consent. Not to mention.. denial of health services and other financial support for a woman you forced to take an unwanted pregnancy to term AND the baby as well.
By all means.. allow incest, and then condemn the child who becomes pregnant though forced incest by the father.
This legislature in Alabama has got to have the lowest aggregate IQ for any legislature in the nation.
22
But, of course, Republicans cannot do anything, anything at all to stop or even reduce the deaths to our children that result from gun violence. So, please save the sanctimonious garbage about how you care about the sanctity of all life. It rings awfully hollow coming from those whose professed concern for the unborn overlaps with a gun fetish.
24
Alabama has had a slight setback on this pro life bill but all is not lost. They should try to get one of the most important human rights issues bills passed which is pro life the first time. Of course, with all the planning and preparations it still may take some time before it is approved in Alabama with the pro abortion folks fighting them every step of the way. They must not lose heart though.
More people are on the pro life side and have given them their support. They want to end this atrocity called abortion once and for all. With patience and time, it will most definitely happen. Pro life groups have waited this long they can wait a bit longer. And the fight continues but the victors will be those precious babies in the womb who deserve to be born. Finally they will be able to.
2
What about those babies in cages? Do you care? What about those children murdered in their first grade classroom? Do they count? Or is it only the fetus you care about?
12
@KMW We'll be happy to send all these children born of rape or incest to you to raise since you care so much about those precious babies. Please forward your address to the Alabama legislature so they can begin setting up transport. You are rather heartless towards the women who undergo unwanted or dangerous pregnancies, so would you like to take care of them, too? You understand, pre- and post-natal care, schooling, housing, all the other expenses and obligations of parenting. Sure glad you are willing to take up the cause.
9
To Republicans, fetuses are humans worthy of rights but death row inmates, nope. Immigrants, nope. Minorities, nope. And of course, once the baby is born they don’t want to provide any services such as health care. Such good human beings.
24
In a red state where living children are denied the basic right to health care, food subsidies, housing subsidies, welfare is the norm, big business manufactures Christianity, and porn is king; and in this moment the entire country is asked to believe that Alabama actually cares for the unborn? The same unborn they refuse to feed, that go straight from school into for-profit prisons? Why does Alabama hold the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the free world? History teaches that when you force breed poverty human beings die in masse. The children that survive a wicked childhood will be uneducated and poor but most of all they will rely on debt to feed their state mandated bred children. The greater the debt, the greater the wealth it produces, and the poor will work for nothing...seems greed is never sated. We not only pay their taxes, now they want us to bear their slaves. Jim Crow Alabama dons a new hood; a banker's bark touts a re-tooled constitution. When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. Alabama takes the lead.
19
I will support the states and pro lifers in eliminating the right to an abortion when two things happen--full medical support, education, food and guaranteed housing for the mother and child paid for by the state and the man who got her pregnant for 18 years; and any man who doesn't or can't pay his half has to have a vasectomy and needs to serve 18 years of community service. And in case of incest or rape, then the offender goes to jail for 18 years and pro lifers take care of the baby until adulthood. There, problem solved.
25
“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person..."
Should it be counted in the census?
Does it count as a tax deduction?
Is a fertilized egg an unborn child?
If not, when is an embryo an unborn child?
If it is, what about the millions of fertilized eggs that fail to implant? Is the mother guilty of an abortion? Perhaps it is God or Mother Nature who is responsible for the abortion?
16
I can partially understand why some men support abortion, the better to control women, but why oh why would a woman want the state to have control over her body? Unbelievable.
16
Is there even any hope at this point? It often seems that abortion opponents are practically invincible. This is it. The final blow to Roe.
People of means will soon learn there is a price for ignoring this battle as a poor person's issue.
8
So, in Alabama and like-minded states, if a mother dies in childbirth is the child guilty of manslaughter (or some crime where intent is not required)?
Are all fathers required to provide financially for all expenses, from childcare so mom can work through college?
Are rapists and incest-fathers arrested in these states?
15
Make the state pay every unwanted baby/mother $1.5 million (or some such figure) at birth for 18 years of support. Then state must pay for college as well. That will end this in a heartbeat...no pun intended.
13
What is it about conservatives? They just can't keep their big nose out of other people's business.
24
Alabama is a completely backward state we all know that. On par with the developing world in health, morbidity, and mortality issues, it's also steeped in superstition and religiosity.
Therefore, all women should be banned from living and working in Alabama. It should be a state of only men that way they would never have to worry about abortion or pregnancy for that matter.
12
I LOVE the gentleman's signs!!
8
I myself am anti-abortion. (I feel bad about taking down a tree.) I believe what the Book of Deuteronomy says: "I have set before you a blessing and a curse, life and death. Therefore, choose life...."
However, I can't stand the idea of men and government controlling women's bodies. Maybe if women withheld sex from them, they'd get the message. Or maybe if men were forced to raise and educate the kids, they'd get the message.
The only solution I see is making safe, effective birth control available for any female who wants it. -- thegamesmenplay.com
6
But the forced birthers are against contraception, especially free contraception.
4
Conservatives on abortion hold that an embryo/fetus has a right to life, which it has regardless of what act brought it to life.
So pregnancies due to rape or incest are irrelevant regarding right to life.
That's highly counter intuitive for obvious reasons. But in order to have a consistent position, conservatives have to hold this counter intuitive position.
A reductio ad absurdum, I think.
5
I think it’s time for people to start direct provocative confrontation with lawmakers who support such support such egregious legislation. Find out where they live; find out where they shop; find out where their kids go to school; find out where they dine out. Make your displeasure known.
12
@jgm
Yes, and find out how many affairs they're having and how many abortions their girlfriends have had.
11
Men need to stop being The Deciders about women's bodies. They need to stop. Now.
17
I think it has to come down to this: women everywhere, I mean everywhere they have agency, should withhold sex until men everywhere stop with war, violence, misogyny, abuse, and controlling women. even if it means an end to civilization. I don't see a way out of this.
8
For Alabama, it's a "two-for": 1) only affects poor (mostly black) women who can't travel for an abortion, and 2) redirects millions of dollars in legal costs to (mostly white) lawyers that would otherwise go to programs for the poor (blacks).
Perfect "separate but unequal" legislation in the Deep South.
12
Breaking News:
The Alabama Legislature today gave final approval to legislation declaring it is no longer the year 2019.
By terms of the bill, the year is declared to be 1669 and all laws adopted since that year are nil and void and all law is determined to be as it was 350 years ago.
"That's how we measure progress in Alabama" said one legislator, adding, "We go backward in time. We are a very backward place, where white men prevail, as backward and primitive as it gets and we white folk like it that way."
14
I agree completely. Stop calling it pro life and start using pro birth. Where are the good Christians lining up to raise the babies that the mothers don’t want to bring into the world but will be forced to?
13
@Linda
I have a better idea. How about we call it "anti-choice"?
4
Where are the good Christians who care about those babies in cages?
7
We will go back to the era of Jane, the Underground Railroad of abortion. Or doctors/midwives will find ways to skirt the system.
Abortion illegal if there’s a fetal heartbeat? Solution: don’t look for one. Don’t do a pregnancy test. Don’t do an ultrasound. Do a pelvic exam, determine that the uterus is enlarged, blame “retained menses due to stenosis (scarring/narrowing) of the cervix,” and the cure? Dilation and curettage, which is the same procedure for treating abnormal periods, polyps, miscarriages, and elective abortions. This is a strategy used by doctors in countries like Ecuador where surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy (universally non viable for embryo and potentially deadly for mom) is illegal if there’s fetal cardiac activity. They get the least experienced sonographer to do the ultrasound, declare that there’s no heartbeat, and do the procedure to save mom.
How about this: dilate the cervix with instruments but don’t evacuate the contents. Send the woman to the hospital. The open cervix means she is diagnosed with “inevitable miscarriage “ and can at that point be treated with d&c. If the woman doesn’t report the person who did the dilation, then no one can say for sure if it was a miscarriage or a termination of the pregnancy.
I’m horrified to even think about scenarios like this, but what are we to do when the forced birth/anti woman brigades make legal abortion a thing of the past?
12
This is not freedom.
11
As far as Sen. Figures' comment, I don't see a "right way" to do this. It is a pure example of extreme culture war behavior. It will be up to the courts to sort this out and up to the public to vote people into office who will moderate the extremism overtaking parts of the nation.
5
Trust that Alabama has enough funds to care for the mothers and to pay for the costs of children affected by its proposed legislation. Not to mention the effect of the lost medical personnel who will leave this throw-back state.
9
“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” said Representative Rich Wingo, a Republican who supported the legislation.
Is a developing fetus self-aware? Is an unborn child aware of its own existence? I find it difficult to believe that the politicians in Alabama can speak truthfully for all of the unborn children in their state. If a life form is not aware that it exists then there is no one, no person, present. Is not personhood defined by a collection of memories of experiences?
6
Men have to pay too if this law is in anyway equitable. The accountability should be rigorously enforced and the state should pay for that enforcement as vigorously as they prosecute medical practitioners and women.
The “absent” men and boys who father a child forced to birth in these states should have unlimited financial liability. If the father is under 18, his family would also be exposed to unlimited liability financially.
Also, men and boys who father children in these cases should also have mandated personal time dedicated to supporting the mother and child. If this is not practical due to domestic violence, then they should go to a weekend jail program.
To clarify, if women are forced to have a child, who covers the medical bills? Who covers pre-natal? What efforts are made to ensure a healthy birth given that mostly the poor and young are going to be facing this.
16
The technical design of a human being is such that his/her independent life begins with the first breath. It is fair to say that this fact is irrefutable. On the other side, his/her independent existence ends with the last breath. Ditto. Irrefutable.
The mother's body supports the fetus until this moment of unchained release. Thus, it is her right to address her physical condition in the way she chooses.
And, after all, how many anti-abortion folks actually know why they themselves are alive and breathing in the first place?
Doesn't it make sense to be really clear on this issue before telling others how to live?
Sadly, most folks don't have the courage to ask why they are alive until their last grasping breaths, when it is too late.
4
These bans, it must be said, only affect the poor and lower middle class. The wealthy will not be inconvenienced as they have the ability to travel.
12
Why not have all boys at the age of 10 get a vasectomy. If his doctor and spiritual advisor believe he is mature and financially able to support a child, he may have the vasectomy reversed. This eliminates the chance of "unwanted" pregnancies. Seems fair to me. What say you?
17
I'm old enough to remember when abortion was illegal. It was not a good time. And, women got abortions anyway. There was an underground network of doctors (and charlatan doctors) and a network of women who'd pass along information to other women seeking abortions. Needless to say, this was not always a safe way to end a pregnancy. MUCH OF THE IMPETUS FOR LEGALIZING ABORTIONS WAS TO MAKE THEM SAFE. Do these "pro-life" people not have a clue? Women will get abortions anyway.
Will it be illegal for a woman from Alabama to go to a state where the procedure is legal (and safe)?
16
@kbw
When I was a student nurse in 1953. a woman was admitted who had had a back street abortion. Her health was so damaged that she was transferred to Bellevue because there were treatments available there that our hospital did not have. What surprised me as an 18 year old, naive girl was that so many women nurses were so negative and judgmental about this woman. I had at the time only a rudimentary knowledge about sex and its outcomes. The woman died in New York City and we young women were just beginning our education regarding women and the prevailing detriment to our lives.
1
If we can add a citizenship question to the census why not a few questions to gather opinions on issues that impact everyone, such as:
1. Are you pro life or pro choice?(better wording exists but you get the picture).
2. Are you in favor of increasing gun control?
3. etc
4. etc
Presumably this would gather more information on the opinions of more citizens and residents than currently vote and thus be a better gauge of the will of the people than our current democratic processes.
5
As Bernie Sanders said (at a Fox News town hall, of all places), decisions about a woman's body should be made between that woman and her doctor, without interference by Federal, State or Local government officials. The so called "pro-life" people are very much into government repression.
17
while I know some good people have been duped by the "pro-life" movement, at heart it is a vicious movement of religious zealots of all stripes to use the power of government to force their views on all women and punish those who enjoy sex when they don't want kids. This is evident as they also generally oppose making birth control available. Forcing women to bear children they don't want is cruel. Decent people and all groups with women members should avoid states like Georgia, Ohio and such that have passed these laws which say in effect the mostly male legislators know better than the women in their state should do. Instead, come (as tourists, conventioneers, entrepreneurs...) to states that respect a woman's right to decide for herself.
7
Very backwards thinking group there in Alabama. Except for a football team, their about an inch away from being Mississippi. I can speak to this opinion having lived in Alabama for four years and born in Biloxi.
The man with the sign makes such a great point. Turn to your bibles and see the part where you are to love your enemies.
7
medical abortion is literally taking pills. the thing that comes out just looks like a big blood clot.
the other thing is: 6 weeks pregnant Is counted from when your last period started. possibly 3 or 4 weeks from egg and sperm meeting. 2 weeks of implantation. that's NOT A PERSON!
having accessed medical abortion i can currently say that my choice to terminate does not impact me or anyone else other than in a positive way.
12
No government, state or federal, in a free society, is the sovereign of a citizen's body The citizen is, whether it concerns abortion, suicide, what we eat and, for that matter, what drugs we ingest. Our country has perverted freedom by intruding on our private personal and interpersonal conduct yet allowing corporate entities and their executives to avoid criminal liability for misconduct that destroys lives and the environment. Were a corporation able to have an abortion, states like Alabama would gladly permit it.
7
This is about tunnel-vision and narrow-minded, simplistic thinking by some who use their power (and simple minds) to impose religious punishment on women by denying them the right to make health, medical and life decisions for themselves.
9
How many times do I have to say this? Anti-choice people do not care about children at any stage of development. They pretend to, and their farce has worked well. But look at their actions and lack of action. Are all pregnant girls and women protected from violence and discrimination? Do they all have safe housing? How about high-quality nutrition and medical care? Are parenting classes and perinatal support offered to every single expecting mother? No, no, no and no. Millions of existing children, who I think have value, live in poverty and suffer abuse. And what about efforts at prevention? Sham sex education and policies against birth control are popular among the anti-choice crowd. This is about controlling girls and women and forcing religious beliefs onto others. It is not about the welfare of children, and never was.
10
It is not only in Alabama (although this is the most extreme of abortion measures) that these abortion laws are being enacted. South Carolina and Georgia Rebublican legislatures have also passed so-called "heartbeat" abortion laws. South Carolina proponents argue that polls sshow a majority of women in SC support the legislation. I wonder if the poll was just an up-and-down vote that does not spell out consequences such as the criminilization of women held to account for a fetus?
I believe that many of us are not always aware of what goes on with our state legislatures until it is too late. We should be publicizing that the U.S, has already one of the highest maternal death rates in developed (and not so-developed) countires); that we have one of the worst life-expectancy rates compared to countries with health sytems designed to offer access for all; that we have a high child poverty rate, and that we are failing our students and teachers. All this to be exacerbated by abortion laws that are designed to rob women of their dignity by hypocritical legislators who refuse to acknowledge that a woman's choice is written into law; that a woman's choice carries a weighty responsibility and one, uinlike their legislation, that is not made in the abstract.
140
@HC
unfortunately these absurd backward ideas to outlaw abortions directly take away a woman's human rights.
this also unfairly discriminates against the poor. rich women can fly or drive out of state to have an abortion if they want an abortion. poor women can't afford to do that. also, unplanned pregnancies reduce a woman's ability to further educate herself and go to college because many times that becomes the choice. i think we will also see a rapid rise in suicide of young girls and women are not able to have abortions to end an unwanted pregnancy. very sad that this country has become so backward that we are willing to take away American women's rights and change settled landmark Supreme Court decisions. Very troubling and sad. The ridiculousness of this is most the time, these legislators are old white men that really don't have a clue what they are talking about.
33
@HC
I assume that refusal to enact gun control and now the anti vaxer movements will fill the birth control void. I wonder at the moral values of someone vilifying needles and forceps but not a 9mm slug. None of these legislators should be allowed to see doctors for any reason.
If you don't agree with medicine and want to live by your beliefs, how unAmerican is it to impose your belief, or ask the Government to sanctify your religion into law. Blatantly Unconstitutional.
26
@Rain they do have a clue and no they don't care about the quality of life of women, especially poor women. They demonize them in fact to control them. Force breeding poverty creates debt. The greater the debt the greater the wealth it generates. It's only for money. Always the money.
10
And yet, the majority of people who would make abortions illegal are the same ones who don't believe in birth control or health science classes that teach young people about their bodies. If you want to stop people from having abortions, help EDUCATE them to not get pregnant in the first place.
245
@MEW and not to impregnate.
11
@MEW
Yup. If they truly wanted to prevent abortions they would hand out pills and condoms to everyone.
They would mandate sex ed starting in grade 6.
They would be out calling for the blood of the fiend Moore who preyed on young girls.
Clearly, it's not actually their goal.
18
@Leonard I've been reading this article and the comments. You are the first person to mention shared responsibility. The ban would need to deal with fathers as well as mothers. Children are expensive and time consuming; it is wrong to expect a woman to bear these costs alone.
25
Alabama senators have at least admitted what other state legislators won't: that these laws are deliberately made to be flagrant violations of Roe v. Wade, in hopes of triggering the Supreme Court revisiting and overturning Roe, preferably with Gorsuch or Kavanaugh, their anointed saints, writing the majority opinion. It's what they were nominated for, and this has been the plan for 30 years. Stack the courts with judges with hard-right views (i.e., that government can't protect anyone from anything or bestow any rights or protections upon any oppressed minority), and overturn Roe.
99
@Vexations
This is the state that gave us a pedophile Senate nominee, right? I don't think it is honesty as much as complete amorality.
18
@Vexations Every action provokes an equal and opposite reaction. Wait until our side has had a bellyful of the superstitious nonsense of the flat-earth anti-science quasi-hominids, who look for advice in a book written by people who thought the earth was flat and circled by the sun, and believed that they were created in the image of an omniscient being.
10
It is beyond my ability to understand why point of heart thumbing is the issue, yet at the same time the system lacks support for a parent supporting a child who was unwanted...
Currently, a majority of these children are unable to not access quality education, the health care, food and medical services are offered for those in need to support the life of a child and themselves. You do not live with the consequences of the status of parents and your judgments and their resolutions are not warranted nor are they kind.
16
A girl is raped by her father. Then she is forced to endure 9 months of pregnancy and go through the pains of childbirth to bear the offspring of her brutal father, an offfspring that will be at once her own child and her half sibling. Are you kidding me? How could anyone be for this?
142
Because you have convinced yourself that the fetus is more important than the girl or woman. It’s systematic devaluing of female lives and autonomy. Welcome to the American South.
24
@Lou
This is anti-choice fanfic. They love this scenario. Serious-- go look on any anti-choice websites and you'll see dozens of "articles" about women in horrifying circumstances like this who "realized tHe BaYbeE WaZ INnOcEnt!" and they were so grateful they were forced to give birth, so therefore ALL women should be forced to give birth.
2
Being pregnant is a very serious health condition for many women. Hypertension, anemia, preeclampsia, diabetes, hyperemesis gravidarum, dangerous worsening of existing heart conditions, postpartum autoimmune disease and depression, etc.
That the state could force women into enduring these conditions is something out of dystopian science fiction.
94
Giving birth is also a very serious thing to experience. My friend almost died giving birth 7 years ago. She’s upper middle class, had no pre-existing health issues and lives in a major U.S. city. It happens, folks.
13
Egad. What is it with men and women in the Bible belt who so obsess about determining a woman's fate? That is precisely what it is, as having children is the single biggest factor in indicating whether or not a woman goes to school, what her lifetime income will be, what she will contribute to society in ways large and small. Having the right to decide to give birth and/or be a parent is fundamental to a woman's right to have a life of any sort at all.
A woman who is poor, whose baby-daddy just left town and who has minimal education needs this choice more then ever, and more than anyone. Everyone loses when we have more children than we can support, whether speaking collectively or in the case of one woman.
Oh, and just to be snide, perpetuating this awful cycle means that Alabama will remain and become more of a "taker" state at the federal level.
155
@Minneapolis Maven
The governor who will have to sign this law into effect is a woman. Care to rethink any of your positions?
1
@Elfego
How so, responsibility lies with the women as much as the men....
The second sentence states as much. I am not sure what you mean, then.
4
The position that Republican women are traitors to women? No thanks, I’ve seen too much proof to rethink that position.
4
Time for a change! Time to focus on the men in the pregnancy equation. Let's start proposing laws to criminalize the men who impregnate women when they have no intention of supporting her and the child for the next 20 years. Let's see what happens when our male legislators think male lives are on the line. Women have had enough.
311
@Spring Exactly. And it seems that if a fetus is a person at 6 weeks then paternity tests should be given and child support mandated from that point in time on.
39
@Spring
I like that! and how about jailing the men who don't pay their child support religiously and on time? maybe the courts should take their times thinking about how to make the fathers be accountable for the babies they produce and abandon leaving the mom to do everything herself?
29
Did this bill also address the fact that their policies also made it 3-times more likely for african american woman to die giving birth/in the first year of delivering children than literally any other developed nation? Or how in our overall higher maternal mortality rate the lack of access to care plays at least part of the puzzle but their state has not expanded Medicaid and their party is challenging the entire ACA in court?
68
@Erin B
Remember, this is Alabama we are talking about; it hardly has a stellar track record in caring about racism. So to answer your question/observation: I don't think the legislature cares two hoots about the consequences for African American women. Or women in general for that matter since as your rightly pointed out, America's maternal mortality rate is the lowest of all developed countries - and Alabama ranks 48th in U.S. maternal mortality.
6
Erin, we are not going back.
1
@Erin B
You say that like they think its some kind of problem...
This is a women's issue, but apparently many women are anti-abortion or just don't care. More to the point, most women in Alabama clearly still favor men in their government.
Although the governor is a woman, there are very few women in the legislature.
The first step in granting women in Alabama their basic right to control what goes on in their own bodies, and especially to prevent government from forcing a woman to undergo a pregnancy and delivery she does not want, would be for more Alabama women to vote in primaries for female candidates; the second step would be to vote for those women in the subsequent elections.
30
What does being female have to do with it? The governor is a republican female and she will absolutely sign the bill.
1
Meanwhile, America's track record on maternal deaths is dismal: it has the worst rate in the developed world, and it is getting consistently worse. Please explain to me why pro-lifers are not up in arms about preventable maternal deaths. Why do they not see fit to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth, and to have federal standards for hospitals to recognize and deal with preventable deaths such as preeclampsia? I don't understand this selective piousness around life that only encompasses fetuses and holds such little regard for the women who carry that life.
I can't believe we are having this conversation in 2019 about what choices women have about their health. Conservatives are effectively reducing women to birthing vessels. America is turning into Gilead, or the Middle Ages - take your pick.
95
@In Brooklyn "Pro-lifers" want women to be subjugated. Period.
4
Here are two fun (sarcasm) little compromises I've thought up... and I'm sure others have as well...
(1) As a condition of getting a driver's license at 16, boys must get a vasectomy. For those not getting a driver's license, the procedure is mandatory at 18. (But make it no longer necessary for young men to register for selective service, let's ditch that.)
(2) If a man fathers a child, that child has the right to take any of the man's organs, at any time, for any reason (or no reason). So not just in cases where it's like, "Hey Dad, I need a kidney to live, so you have to give me one" -- although those cases would be included -- but even if it's just like, "Hey Dad, you owe me your body, so I'm gonna have a surgeon remove your heart and give it to me."
I know, I know, I know -- it's ridiculous to expect men to face consequences for causing pregnancies.
43
Being so afraid of women being empowered to decide for themselves they use the fetus as an excuse for control. If they really cared so much about children please explain why they refuse to provide help for families once the child is born.
They presume to know more about healthcare than medical professionals. Curing an ectopic pregnancy; doctors would be amazed! Why stop at prohibiting medical care before there is any viable chance of live birth? Why not legislate the mere thought of abortion.
How is there no penalty for the other person involved in creating the fetus? Where is their willingness to write laws to control a man's ability to choose their medical procedures?
33
Pseg, tell Alabama: we are not going back.
3
I am not impressed by the states that want to ban abortion because at the same time many of them refuse to provide adequate medical care, education or housing for the children of their state. If these children are so sacred then surely they deserve the very best chances at a good life that their state can provide.
But that is not the case, many of these states have repeatedly cut their support for providing these children with the means to live a good life. In short they are hypocrites.
71
Why are people who favor banning abortion called "pro-life"? Do they place zero value on the woman's life? Zero responsibility on the man who made her pregnant? We need to fight back against use of this term against women who need to make the difficult choices involved with pregnancy.
89
These lawmakers writing these laws...they have NO CLUE how the human female body works, how pregnancy works, what a miscarriage actually is, and how birth happens. They are making things up, to suit their imagined ideas of what "life" is.
I am so angry I can barely talk about this without exploding. Their end result? The criminalization of being a human female.
105
@JR Agree 100% and more
At six weeks, I did not know I was pregnant. Very few women know they are pregnant that early.
Show me a man who knows this - and then then can legislate over MY body
how dare they? I am apoplectic with rage
11
You are absolutely correct. This is a war between men and women. Men are SCARED OF WOMEN. Always have been. So they pass laws keeping women from entree into business, law, and government. Then they forbid them from owning property, equal education, voting, and control of money.
But we’ve clawed our way into their hermetic world. This is their last stand: their terrified attempt to keep women quiet and obedient.
We will not go back.
9
@C p Saul
This is true. What better way to push women back than to force them to have children they don't want and cannot care for. Growing up, I saw how miserable my female relatives were, who had to stay home. Both my mother and my grandmother begged me not to choose the path they did.
5
And you thought the “The Handmaid’s Tale” was just a TV series. It’s also real life in a group of states that put things like hard-core religion and guns above women’s rights. How many more coat-hangar procedures do people want? The only way to stop it is to vote out the politicians.
55
By Instituting a law that would penalize women who are more than six weeks pregnant, the state of Alabama intends to abrogate to itself the “right” to decide whether or not a woman should continue an unintended pregnancy. Even if she has been raped and is the victim of incest.
The State of Alabama therefore will, no doubt, also be issuing concomitant legislation that assumes complete responsibility for the health of the mother and for total care of the unwanted children until they reach maturity.
Naturally, the state will want to be certain that any such infant, unwillingly birthed, will be neither physically nor mentally harmed or abused. Once the child is born the state should inform the residents of Alabama that their taxes will contribute to “life” in order to assure that any child born in the “pro-life” cause has a decent existence once it exits the womb. That she or he will have clean, safe housing; a loving caretaker; nutritious food, warm clothing; a clean environment and a good education.
Unless the above conditions are met all that poor unwanted infant is likely to experience is “pro-existence,” with the resulting burden on the unwilling parent and the taxpayers.
As for “pro-life,” what ridiculous, and misleading, terminology! Use the right words: anti-abortion or anti-choice.
42
I am sure that Alabama's anti-abortion law includes an appropriation of sufficient money to help women with the costs of pre-natal care and delivery. After all, “That child has a right to develop and be delivered.." Right? [Crickets...]
43
Besides the obvious point that this is really about dominating women, do any of these extreme "pro life" advocates do anything to help people who are currently alive and in need? The homeless? The addicts? The poor? The mentally ill? The discriminated against?
38
@Flaco no, they do not.
3
States with sky high maternal death rates for American women should have to bring those numbers back past third world levels before we have to even listen to their bizarre intrusions into women's healthcare.
10 years for a doctor who performs an abortion. No exceptions for rape and incest. Every legislator should have to face a panel of women who question them.
Re-inserting an ectopic pregnancy into a uterus that is not prepared for pregnancy- are you kidding?? This is called the insanity of men and every one of these people is unfit for office.
39
Alabamians will protect a fetus with their own lives…until that child is born,when they lose all interest. They don't feed, clothe, vaccinate, educate, protect, nurture, house, inspire, enrich or love it. Then the tiki torches come out, the death penalty Is made legal & guns are everywhere . With those people it's all about the timing.
47
@cocobeauvier - They're not big on pre natal care either.
1
" our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person". Women, not so much. Just incubators, and renters of their own bodies.
Seriously.
58
@Phyliss Dalmatian, I see your logic in that conclusion. However, #MeToo would vociferously beg to differ. Would starting #Unborn be in bad taste? Somehow adding # to anything suddenly makes justification totally unnecessary when there’s a movement behind it.
If men could get pregnant abortion wouldn't be an issue.
56
@James Gaston
No, to quote numerous women....If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
5
@James Gaston The original feminist line from decades ago was:
If men could get pregnant abortion, would be a sacrament.
4
@James Gaston
It would be a sacrament...
1
This will go to the SC and then it will end the rights of women- you can feel it coming. Trump loves this stuff.
30
No, Simon. If Gorsuch and Kavanaugh uproot Roe v Wade women will take to the streets. Blood will be shed.
WE.WILL.NOT.GO. BACK.
4
I cannot understand why legislators waste time on this. Abortion is a deeply personal choice and the vast majority of Americans recognize the moral dimensions involved in it. But that is no reason to involve states in micromanaging whether women can have access to it. The Roe decision might not have been the most persuasively reasoned opinion ever, but it's main point - that there is a right to privacy and it does cover the choice to terminate a pregnancy - is convincing.
This is Republican grandstanding. Nothing more. Unfortunately, people will get hurt - many women in particular.
129
@CastleMan You must not be familiar with Southern morals. A politician's outward show of piety outweighs anything else when a voter decides how to mark a ballot.
5
Alabama has always been a state near the bottom in every measure of well-being from high school graduation, infant mortality, teen pregnancy, overall health and early death.
They oppose abortion but don't support, in any measurable way, their citizens once they are born. It's a very sad state of affairs.
Add to this a state legislature full of " good ole boys" still living in another age where they apparently prefer their women to be silent, barefoot, submissive and pregnant. For what else could possibly explain their need to oversee the health and reproductive rights of women in their state?
Their hypocrisy is stunning.
Their self-righteous acts are sickening.
The only thing that will make these men understand is loss of revenue to their state.
So let's stop visiting Fairhope and those other cute coastal towns.
Let the movie industry think long and hard about pumping money into Alabama.
Let's not order anything off the internet from Alabama.
Let's not watch any of their sports teams...especially college football.
Let's just pretend Alabama doesn't exist.
Until they respect the rights of half of their population.
304
@It's About Time
Our neighbor to the south has quite a few problems, but also quite a few positives. Don't crack on them too hard.
I'd like to know if the statistics that put Alabama and Mississippi at the bottom are reflective of how they treat their black citizens. If you segregated the data by race, would these states go up when you only looked at whites?
I ask because I believe this bill is aimed at black women who seek abortions. The white legislators are not picturing their own daughters or wives being affected because they can take a trip up north.
16
@It's About Time
HALLELUJAH and Amen! Let's find out how those righteous, hypocritical so-called Christians feel when it slams them in their wallets... money does talk.
12
The issue is not only about abortion but about who gets to decide and when. The same problem exists for the terminally ill and those in vegetative comas. After all the family's money is spent keeping someone alive, who pays next? And what happens if the attending nurse who stopped being paid quits? Would she be legally liable for the death of the patient? Would a family who cannot meet the costs be both morally and legally liable? How comfortable are the anti-abortion activists with the idea that if they fail to sustain a person's life, that they would be criminally liable? And who would go into nursing knowing that even if unpaid or for failing to report to work, the nurse is criminally accountable for the death of someone on life support? Even if the family signs the papers, the State's laws could criminalize the decision to abort a life of someone without measurable brain functions and capable of surviving on their own, like a fetus.
23
@Maxine and Max
The issue here is democracy and whether the voters get to decide all issues we face or whether certain issues get carved out and are treated specially, such as abortion and the right to own guns. Personally I think that the democratic process should be the final word on everything. If the people want abortions (or not) vote on it. If the people want gun control, vote on it. I am fine with whatever is decided at the ballot box. What I don't like is unelected Supreme Court justices making law that is essentially outside the democratic process. I am fine with Roe v. Wade, but ultimately it should have been legislated, or should have gone to a national referendum.
2
@Scott Werden
I must disagree, Mr. Werden. Our Declaration declared our rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I believe that those rights envelope personal, intimate health care decisions - including whether or not to choose to have an abortion - and are not subject to a "vote"...
3
@Scott Werden
"If the people want abortions (or not) vote on it."
How is that better than our current system where each INDIVIDUAL gets to decide for herself whether she wants an abortion? Can't get more democratic than that.
8
I find this an awful result of mysticism gone wild. In the long run they will not win.
17
@jkenb: Do you mean misogyny gone wild?
Is anyone really surprised by this news? Republicans have always stood for smaller government and less regulation, except when it comes to women’s bodies and women’s health.
115
what's so ironic about state leadership(like here in Texas and Alabama) is that they claim to care about the fetus, but they don't care enough to provide clean air , clean water, better education, and provide adequate healthcare. These people are pro-birth, not pro-life.
208
@Student, and don’t dare even think about touching their guns.
27
If Alabama passes and signs this legislation, I will be boycotting the state. This means that I will not live, work, or teach in Alabama. I won’t buy products made in Alabama, and I won’t do business in Alabama. It’s time for these kind of bills to have real economic consequences.
I sent a email saying all of this to the Alabama governor yesterday. If you agree, please send an email to her as well.
136
@E the only problem with that is who would go there anyway?
21
@E. Alabama doesn't really have much to boycott....good intentions, though.
22
@E
Wait a minute... The governor of Alabama is a woman? What about all the people in these comments saying this is what happens when old white men make decisions that should be left up to the woman?
I'm so confused! (Disingenuousness and stupidity always confuse me, by the way.)
2
So the fight is actually about whether the measures to take away women's agency over their own bodies don't go far enough? Got it.
42
In Missouri, the house majority republican extremists are attempting to push through an even more restrictive bill.
It includes exceptions for medical emergencies but not rape or incest.
17
@nom de guerre - After the KS Supreme Court ruled that the KS Constitution guarantees bodily autonomy for women, the rightwing legislature began laying plans to have a referendum to for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in the state. Interestingly, the seem sure they'd get the 2/3 vote to pass it. I fully believe they're so enmeshed in their little rightwing bubble that they have no idea how many people would vote to keep abortion legal. I could regret saying this but I tend to think a constitutional amendment would be what's needed to shut down these forced birthers for a long time to come.
2
@nom de guerre Ironic since St. Louis is the murder capital of the country.
@nom de guerre i live in columbia, mo. and if this despicable legislation comes to pass, i will move. don't care the cost. these politicians don't represent me or more than half the state. despicable.
2
Where is the law that holds men and their families (if minors) financially accountable if they father a child?
If a woman is forced to have a child, the man who fathered the child should also be forced to financially pay and also provide their personal time (if appropriate).
If young women have to forgo college or postpone their dreams, men should equally be burdened with putting their dreams on hold too.
119
@Practical Thoughts
The point of these laws is to punish women for having sex. To them, men having sex is a good thing, but the women who would have sex are [words that will get this comment blocked.]
32
@Practical Thoughts Every state has laws on the books to require men to pay child support for their fathered children. However, the reality is these laws are difficult to enforce, especially by women who have few resources and are already overwhelmed.
Many women also say that their "baby daddies" threaten to stop seeing the child at all if they file for child support. This is why it is important to take the social reality into account when passing laws regulating pregnancy.
17
@Practical Thoughts
Agreed. There is absolutely no mention of the fathers ‘ responsibilities. None. This entirely insane. I can imagine a huge increase in domestic assault as a result.
23
Alabama consistently rates at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to education and health, in addition to their horrendous history of racism.
Yet this is what the politicians make a priority--violating women's rights.
64
i see several comments indicating that this is driven entirely by men. while everything about this makes me sick, as a liberal living in a conservative state, i want to remind people that there are also plenty of women who are anti-choice. in fact, it is a female governor who will have to bring this into law (and the article indicates is likely to), and Susan Collins was one of the deciding votes for putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, knowing how he feels about abortion. we need another angle other than 'men are taking our rights away'. this is about religion and every opinion against choice comes down to a religious conviction that it is morally unacceptable. Rich Wingo said it himself - “Courts can do — and have done — many things good and bad, but we would hope and pray that they would go and that they would overturn Roe.” but in a free country, if i don't share their religion, why should i have to be subject to their religions convictions and prayers? leave your god out of my life!
83
@jason Indeed, the whole thing goes back to Phyllis Schaffly, an uber-conservative woman who made a career out of telling women to stay home and not have careers: a good trick if you can pull it off.
15
@jason EVERY vote was a deciding vote.
1
@Curmudgeon,
and ironically, she was NEVER one to stay home and she had quite a career. the hypocrisy is worse than the misogyny.
5
“On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape and incest.”
Trying to ban abortion, and forcing rape and incest victims to give birth is surely one of the most heinous actions that can be imposed on any woman anywhere. That this is happening in a slew of states all over the US in 2019, makes me ashamed to be an American.
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@Susan SLAVERY
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The smaller sign in Travis Jackson's left hand is spot on. If you don't like abortion, I also urge you to just ignore it like when hundreds of school children are murdered by the GOP agenda.
There is nothing pro-life about the Republican party. Nothing at all. They are pro-gun, a weapon with one purpose - to murder people. They will lie about "executing babies" in an abortion clinic, but are all for executing babies and children in a school. I have never seen more hypocrisy in my entire life.
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@YD "They will lie about "executing babies" in an abortion clinic, but are all for executing babies and children in a school." Good point. If abortion could be accomplished with a gun they wouldn't know which side to support.
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Alabama moving to take the lead on a "national cultural battle"? (Oh, how I need italics for emphasis here!) Alabama can't handle its existing problems--and hasn't been able to for a long, long time--yet thinks it should make more--specifically for females? What's next? A ban on ladies' shoes?
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Travis Jackson rocks! Hope he runs for for Alabama Senate!
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The ABORTION issue is only about CHOICE.
The conservatives want the government to control people lives by taking choice away. Remember that most PRO-CHOICE folks would never abort a pregnancy. They just do not want to remove the personal decision making involved.
The guy in the photo with the sign does not seem to understand the real reason liberals want to keep abortion legal and it is not because they would choose it!
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This is just another in a long list of attempts by some to make this state fully run by Christian Law and impose their values on others.
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So the chaos was because women were not restricted enough. Got it.
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I am so sick of this attempt to invalidate the choices women make. Our body, our choice.
Why oh why, do republicans value an inch, or less, of flesh that is entirely dependant on a female host, more than they value the living breathing infant. Enough, move on.
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@Lee Its not about the fetus. Its about controlling and subjugating women.
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so what about the baby's rights after they are born? What about their right to be loved and cared for, to be fed and clothed, to be sheltered from the cold? Are those so-o-o animatedly opposed to abortion willing to support the child when they arrive? What about that child's right to life?
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@Sally McCart - Yep. What about their right to go to school without being gunned down? None of these supposedly pro life politicians are doing anything about gun control.
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This is not about abortion. If it were truly about preventing and reducing abortion, advocates for the bill would beef up welfare programs for mothers, sex ed programs in public schools, and give free access to contraception. You know, the things that actually, statistically reduce abortion.
They are not. In taking a look at what "pro-life" advocates do, one can only conclude that this is about controlling women, controlling their bodies, and forcing them to have children (in particular, poor women of color that don't have means to travel outside the state). After all, if a woman is bogged down with kids she doesn't want, she's likely to make less progress and fuss in society. If you find yourself in a debate with a "pro-lifer" and make these points (and I have, many times), you can eventually back them into admitting that, "Well, if you have sex outside marriage, you deserve to be punished with a baby." That is what this is about, folks. Their "pro-life" beliefs begin at conception and end at birth.
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Ashleigh Adams,
You have not spoken to the pro life folks in New York City who volunteer with mothers and children once they have given birth. They set up housing, employment, job training if the need be. It was a valid criticism years ago that the mother and child were on their own but not any more. The Sisters for Life are very active in getting these mothers and children all the help they need. There are also men and women who volunteer their time at pregnancy centers where mothers go for assistance. No one is ever turned away and they provide all the services needed except abortions.
Things have changed a lot for women who decide to keep their babies. They are never alone and help is available whenever and wherever they need it. They just need to ask.
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I'm glad for the women who benefit from the services you described. However, this is rare. In most areas of our country, services are minimal, or absent. In my area, there may be a heavy religious element to these services that may be off putting to many pregnant women. I remain pro choice. Forcing a woman to carry a baby who will die after birth is cruel. Forcing a woman to care for a baby she cannot provide for and doeesn't want is beyond cruel to that child. Things are just not that easy.
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@KMW In 2016, approx. 13 million children in the US were living in poverty. 58% were the children of single mothers. 18% of children in the US will experience hunger and food insecurity in any given year. That number jumps to 33% for families with single mother headed households. At the same time, conservative politicians are working hard, and succeeding, to cut spending for housing benefits, SNAP, medicaid, and education funding. And if child poverty and hunger mean nothing to you because your coercive organization helped a handful of women, please also consider that the US has the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world, falling just behind Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kazakhstan. Why should anyone be forced into these circumstances? You're right about one thing though. Things HAVE changed a lot for women who decide to keep their babies - they've gotten significantly harder.
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I don't agree with what Alabama is doing.
However, if the people of Alabama really care about this, they need to, at minimal, vote out the people who support these measures and at maximal, consider running for office themselves. If they don't do anything then I'm sorry to say they're getting the gov't they deserve.
It's just a manner of time before we start hearing about women dying of botched abortions in Alabama or or sepsis because they couldn't get to a doctor in time (like in Ireland).
(Yes, there are problems with voter suppression and gerrymandering but as someone who has long advocated for healthcare issues outside of my job with my own money, leisure time, and effort, I will say that the majority of people who COMPLAIN about anything don't lift a finger to DO anything. And yes, I was on the other side -- did not vote as a young person. But as soon as I found my passion, I was visiting Congressional offices/ raising money to try to make changes.)
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Ah yes, Alabama - A state that ranks:
#47 for overall Health Care Outcomes in the country,
#49 in Infant Mortality (8.7 Mortality Deaths per 1,000 live births is almost third world level).
#48 in Premature Death Years lost before age 75 (10,720 per 100,000 population (again at par with the third world).
#48 for its contribution to the National Economy and so on and on.
A state that cannot guarantee basic healthcare to its citizens is not really in a position to discuss the sanctity of life.
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@newton
#42 (just 2 ahead of Louisiana at the bottom) for education quality - which is how you get a population that votes in politicians that waste money passing unconstitutional bills to control half the population rather than providing a better life for their citizens.
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@newton and the folks in Alabama will blame everyone but themselves for those stats.
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@newton . Fantastic!!!!
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I wish the "pro life" crowd were serious about reducing abortion through education, access to contraception, health care, all things proven to work. Instead we have ridiculous grandstanding and attacks on families that cause suffering for women and for their children who are born. Life matters after birth, not only before.
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They aren’t serious about reducing abortion, all they care about is forcing women to have children. There is a lot of chatter on the far right about the declining birth rate in the US, all of these abortion measures we are seeing is a way to force people to have kids. That’s the real goal and those of us on the pro choice side need to understand that.
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@Snowflake I imagine their declining population isn't helped by those who FLEE Alabama, if they have the means, to live in a state that truly values 'life' -- health, education, environment, human rights, etc.
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@AMH - I wish Democrats would start pointing out that their policies are the ones that actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of abortions.
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"That child has a right to develop and be delivered..." Well first of all, Mr. Chambliss, the unborn have no rights. But secondly, it's the MOTHER who is being delivered, not the baby. Something the British obviously understand, as evidenced when they announced that Meghan Markle "was delivered of a son." Because for many women, being pregnant with a child they don't want is a form of bondage, and so the word delivery actually means release...liberation...freedom. Of course these men will never understand this.
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@C Nor will they understand that pregnancy and being delivered of a child is a risky business for the mother, and demands appropriate care, something they are not bothered to fund. (And sadly ... it's not just men denying women autonomy over their bodies)
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Where is the language to lock up the father....remember it takes two. This is bullying loud and clear. Why isn't the focus on the men that make them pregnant.
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I'll look for that, right after ED meds are no longer covered as necessary medicine. lol
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@Calleen de Oliveira - Good question. Failure to pay child support doesn't even impact a person's credit rating.
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@Calleen de Oliveira
Why isn't the focus on the men that make them pregnant?
Unfortunately, we know why.
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Among the ironies of the Left is that they are very keen on democracy and the people having a good argument and a robust debate except when it comes to abortion. Whether or not you are pro abortion, Alabama is showing us that democracy means a vibrant debate of the people not laws forced down on all of us by the Fiat of the Courts.
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@Jason McDonald Legal and accessible abortion is not being forced down anyone's throat. It is an option that women can choose to use if and when it is necessary. It is not covered by Medicaid, Medicare, or through the VA. In some states it cannot legally be covered by even private insurance (Texas) and more than half have restrictions on whether any coverage can be purchased through private insurance or on the exchanges. This has no impact on your whatsoever. However, when you deny access to safe and legal abortions, THAT is a law being forced down on all of us. THAT is preventing women from having agency. THAT is harming individuals and families. THAT has an impact on all of us. My life, rights, and choices are not up for debate, robust or otherwise.
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@Christina It's deeply ironic that a person who can never, ever be "forced" to carry a pregnancy somehow is delusional enough to think abortion is being "forced" on him, isn't it? How can an abortion be forced on you if you are physically incapable of ever needing one?
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@Jason McDonald - Nobody is "pro-abortion". The term is pro-choice.
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And you thought The Handmaid’s Tale was fiction. Think again.
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America certainly loves its culture wars. Why should Alabama's legislators (predominantly male) consider what a woman should do with her pregnancy? Just asking.
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If states are going to pass these laws, there should be financial repercussions. Businesses should be pressured by shareholders to limit investments and relocation to states that do not support women’s and LGBT rights. Shareholders in mutual funds can wield a lot of power if acting collectively. Tax breaks should not be the only incentive for business activities. Perhaps this would encourage lawmakers to legislate differently.
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@Philip
I don't think you understand the name 'Alabama'. This is the state that Roy Moore can conceivably run (and be elected) for Senate or chief dogcatcher or whatever, once again, just for example.
The trouble with Alabama and many other Deep South states is that the (white majority) is conditioned culturally to vote Republican for a few generations now. The issues don't matter, you simply can't be seen to vote for a Democrat. In this environment, any kook can run with a "R" next to their name, and once elected pass any laws they please.
The answer is to stay away at any cost from these states. I feel sorry for the folks trapped in there - the poor always suffer.
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