Pro life? Stop the supply of US arms to Saudi Arabia that have slaughtered women and children in Yemen. Pro life? Ban guns that massacre US citizens, including children, every week. Pro life? Get control of John Bolton before he leads the US into a war with Iran that will, inevitably, lead to the massive loss of civilian life as in Iraq. Pro life? It's just massive hypocrisy by christian fundamentalists.
38
Why can't these regressive, overwhelmingly white Republicans do for abortion what they do for climate change, gun violence, education, Trump's racism/incompetence/corruption/amorality?
Just ignore it.
18
Prohibiting abortion, ESPECIALLY in the case of rape or incest, is rooted in diabolical economics. It declares open season on females as rape targets for breeding an economically impoverished and powerless underclass, dependent on the evil men who raped them into existence.
Basic questions for Sociology’s Conflict theory are: Who gains, at whose expense, in the short run and the long term?; Who looses? To answer, enter the mind of the entity whose agenda reduces/eliminates others’ rights, options, and access.
Today’s white, male legislator are slave-holder descendants who systematically raped black females to produce laborers with impunity, before and after the slave trade ended, to maintain their economic system. Rape is not excluded to insure impunity for rapes today. Birth rates are low, slaves gone, Jim Crow laws eliminated, share croppers have dwindled and prison labor insufficient to meet need. Forcing women to carry an unwanted pregnancy, eliminating access to social safety nets, and women become the source for an economically impoverished and powerless underclass of cheap labor. Rapists having parental rights to the child of that rape signifies impunity for rape. Unable to support offspring, women can be forced into relinquishing the children: to the rapist, (with paternal rights to custody); or, to for-profit “orphanages” operated by southern men, providing profits to stock holders (think immigrant detention centers) and a constant stream of laborer.
14
Why is this government still ruining the lives of the many for the sake of a few religious zealots. Have we, the American people, abolished slavery or just hide it under laws to hurt those it was meant to protect which includes women who up until recently were considered property of the Male patriarchy as well! Wake up america! You are and been duped for so long you don't realize it anymore. The dumbing down of the country for the benefit of some old white rich American oligarchs.
7
Abortion will NOT go away. They can pass all the anti-abortion laws they like but white ladies will
abort at will here or abroad while black and Mexican ladies ( who can’t afford criminal abortions) will reproduce on mass or die under the knife of some incompetent butcher.
Who will care for these over abundant poor or orphaned kids in a country that doesn’t sanction health care?
Won’t white suprematists finally notice that they are the new minority? Foolish choices like anti-abortion laws are made by fools—not true Christians.
11
Here's another suggestion for the "god fearing" mostly male legislators of Alabama: outlaw sex unless married in a religious ceremony, outlaw all drugs enhancing sex for all deemed to old or feeble to have it (Viagra etc.) and execute proven rapists and practitioners of incest without a trial. Makes sense, don't it?
14
Alabama just voted to make abortion illegal and there is no prenatal services or childcare. And yet they allow guns to flood the state and still execute people on death row. If this doesn’t make your head spin I don’t know what will.
13
The divide between red and blue states isn't (just) about abortion, it's about the who gets a voice, and who has power in a society that is ruled by the 30% who are white and male. Abortion is the point of a spear.
8
Interesting how the state sees fit to tell a woman that she is a mother of a separate “human being” when there is a fetal heartbeat but places no parental obligation on the father at that point. Let’s demand that all men register with the state as fathers—and all the legal responsibility that comes with that—a few weeks after having intercourse and you’ll see a quick end to this lunacy.
11
Yes--words matter.
Fetuses fit the biological definition of parasite--the form of symbiosis benefiting one organism but not the host. They will feel like that too--unless motherhood is a choice. If not, and the parasite can't be aborted, it will also feel like forced labor--a form of political oppression--imposed on women by stupid, god story deluded men.
The delusion is often founded on Bible faith (=dogma); yet there is no biblical reference to abortion. And "Thou shall not kill" is idiotic--without specifying What?--killing includes antibiotics.
It's worse. "Rights of the unborn" is incoherent. Rights--think right to vote--are protected options; it's wrong to interfere with either voting or omitting. Aussies don't have a right; they have a duty--it's wrong to omit--without good reason.
Rights presume the capacity for choice--to do or refrain. Fetuses plants and most animals lack the capacity for choice. Border collies probably have it--they know when they've been bad.
So "right to life" is a con. It really means a politically imposed duty to gestate--and mother--regarding of life plans and even the capacity to be a good mother. 10 year old girls can ovulate. So do impoverished oppressed women.
It's even worse-- "life" in "right to life" is mere quantity--quality of life is irrelevant. They care nothing about quality of life--it's as if they want to a drone class of unloved children and oppressed parents.
Ethically disgusting, really. Babies should be wanted, loved.
5
Perhaps it would be best to call their bluff, let them have their abortion ban and not kick it up to the Supremes. Let Alabama become the most backward, reactionary state in the union. Then we can sit back and watch as right thinking people of both political parties and corporations with a conscience leave the retrograde little backwater in droves. I can see the sign now; "Now Entering Alabama. First In Misogyny. All Of Our Women Are Chattel." This state should be shunned.
10
Making a woman's life at risk is too high a bar. What about serious damage to a woman's health? That is a larger pool of women and is a major concern. That alone tells me a desire to hurt women is behind the men making such laws. Cruel, abusive, and self righteous men who see women as a target almost to the point of male bonding. Sick.
7
If you live in poverty the best way for you to have a child grow up with good healthcare , wealth and comfort is to find a rich female in Alabama to impregnate willing or not.
3
friendly reminder - you can never ban abortion, you can only ban SAFE and LEGAL abortion
27
No law has ever stopped abortions. The vast majority of women getting abortions are white Christians -simply because they are the vast majority of women. I wonder what they will do when they realize the extent of illegal abortions and that the people getting them are their own christian coworkers, family members, and their own wives. And how many will die before they figure out how stupid this is.
Another law should be passed to require all churches to accept financial responsibility for children born due to unavailability of abortions. That would put the financial responsibility where it belongs.
11
Chambliss of Alabama couldn't answer the most basic questions about female pregnancy. He said he "will trust in my heavenly father". Becker of Ohio suggested extracting an ectopic pregnancy and implanting it in an unprepared uterus. Why didnt he just offer to have it implanted in himself?
This is the health version of the anti-vaxxer people. Dangerously ignorant, true believers who endanger the public.
Where is the Congressional Committee to expose these hypocrites hiding behind some fake spirituality? This is an attack on American women for some cheap political points. They should be exposed as the ignorant frauds that they are, including who among them paid for abortions for extra-curricular girlfriends- there must be several among this bunch.
15
If you're raped by a stranger or your father, so what, says Alabama: have this baby. The bill makes no financial provisions for pregnancy care, delivery, that child's future, or the raped female's mental health. I'm as stunned by this white-male body of legislators denying abortion in those cases as I am appalled by the overarching hypocrisy of 'United for Life' or 'right to life' interfering with private decisions. In 1970, I witnessed the aftermath of a back-room abortion when a friend's roommate returned home from Mexico, broken. Let's hurry on back to those days, right?
12
Tom Lehrer stated it over 50 years ago in "Who's Next?", we will try to stay serene and calm when Alabama gets the bomb. Or if you want to go back to the Civil War, as said not about Alabama, but South Carolina, "too small for a republic, too large for a lunatic asylum".
6
Anytime some one says “ YOU cannot do something because the fictional character that I believe in said so” they are crossing a line. Those people have no place in society. This country needs some major purging. Start with mike pence.
13
Before the first breath is taken, the fetus does NOT have a soul, thus it's NOT yet a human. Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
10
...as I keep saying... There are modern states where women rights MATTER!!!
Or depriving men from sex is a good way to say enough is enough...
We women can do it!
6
If you want to see an issue that will turn states blue fast in the 21st century and make the Republican party irrelevant forever, this is it. Young women in particular, and rightly so, just will not put up with this nonsense.
7
Are the women who are having the abortion also subject to being charged with a felony? If not then why not? Are they not complicit in the act? Are they not subject to the law because some of the state legislators' campaign contributors (those that can afford to go out of state for an abortion) would tolerate a law that would subject themselves, their wives or their daughters to being charged with and tried for violating such a law?
The anti-abortion argument hinges on the definition of life, which by their definition begins at the conception. I would like to point out the common IVF procedures involves freezing of embryos and implantation when the timing is right. If the fertility doctors deemed embryos unsuitable for implantation or found genetic abnormality, the embryos would get discarded. Should these anti-abortion states charge fertility doctors for murder for destroying the embryos, which are the very definition of lives by their definition? Should the patients who decide not to continue on with IVF and ask the doctors to discard embryos be charged with murder as well?
Some raised ethical issues with IVF, but that's not what we are talking about here. A strict definition is made for the definition of life. Will you hold doctor and patients accountable for these embryos?
If the answer is no, IVF is not the same as regular conception, are you saying the tens of thousands of people born through IVF should not have the same rights as regular people if they are not valued as regular lives? Where do you draw the line here?
1
There have been many, many reasons thus far in the Trump preseidency that I considered that this country will have a civil war. Geographic locations not withstanding, we currently have a majority that is being governed by a minority that, through loopholes in our systems of checks and balances, including lifetime judicial appointments, will NEVER have to cede power. Abortion rights will never be accepted by that same minority of so-called right-to-lifers, so this might be the final act to push the U.S. towards a messy, but probably necessary, split-up. I know what side I'll be on.
4
Let Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Ohio et al reap what they sow. State legislators, men mostly, who hear the voice of GOD on TV (and please send the money) who now define a "heartbeat" as a sound emanating from a two chamber "heart" and define a lentil size conceptus as a human being. So the numbers of unwanted children will rise in those states and with that all the problems of more children than we can provide for.
The soybean farmers still love Trump.
The folks in those God hearing states will still love the abortion prohibitionists.
The question remains, where will all those unwanted children migrate to and who will bear their costs?
Likely, they'll leave Alabama and head North.
Thus has it ever been, since the Civil War. The South sends its problems North.
4
Roe v. Wade got it right. The right balance among competing interests, one's conscience and one's ethics. Leave it alone.
3
In Alabama’s desired regression to confederacy, the state will restrict women from voting, institute ‘separate but equal’ racial segregation, then later decriminalize vigilante lynching and slavery. Meanwhile their ‘Christian’ ‘right-to-life’ movement will preside over the most executions per capital of any US state.
3
By protecting abortion, states are expanding the scope under which the heinous procedure may be carried out; if this protection, then I oppose it. Thank you.
We need a strategy to focus on ring fencing some of these states with restrictive abortion policies, focusing on the neighboring states where the right is strengthened and enshrined. This way, poor women or any women are more likely to have affordable access to the operation they choose. Abandon the Christian fundies to the states they want to turn into theocracies, ensure there are enough progressive neighboring states in close proximity.
1
Roe vs Wade didn’t begin an era of abortions; it simply ended back-alley abortions. I could have met my paternal grandmother if abortion had been legal in the 1930's.
Abortion is considered legal as determined by the Supreme Court in 1973. Up until then, abortions were performed, often, by people with little or no medical education and in less-than-desirable environments, lacking sterile conditions and, often, anesthesia. My grandma died from an illegal, botched abortion when my father was a young teen. She had birthed five children and had been widowed. My father and his older sister, the two oldest of her children, dropped out of school and went to work—my dad on a milk truck and my aunt as a domestic—and, with the help of their grandparents, they raised their younger orphaned siblings during the Great Depression. My father mourned her painful death his entire life. As a result, he was a defender of women's rights and believed women should have the right to medical abortion until the day he died.
I’m in my eighth decade of life—my child-bearing days are far behind me. That said, regardless that I will not need an abortion in my remaining years and never needed one in the past, I have no interest in living in any state run by legislators and a governor ignorant and small-minded to the degree that they willfully pass legislation like that which Alabama just passed—it's bad enough living in Kentucky and under the "reign" of our current national wanna-be-autocrat.
11
I can’t recall a day filled with more political hypocrisy. The Alabama governor talks about Alabama’s respect for the sanctity of life on the same day a report comes out on the horrors of the Alabama prison system and the suicides in it along with denying a reprieve for an inmate on death row. Apparently the sanctity of life is subjective. The conservative vision will ruin this country.
7
What if a woman has a natural miscarriage (it happens sometimes). Will she be prosecuted? Falsely convicted? It could happen...
5
Anti-abortion laws will be no more enforceable than the anti-liquor laws of 20th century prohibition in Al Capone’s time. Criminal abortionists will make a fortune, desperate women will die under the knife. Self abortion will be back. Women who are already overburdened with family will take risks with their lives. Some will die. Will so-called Christians then be proud of themselves and of their heinous unjust laws? But abortion will NOT go away!
3
Women who protest against outlawing abortion by wearing long red capes and white bonnets are send a confusing message to the majority of people who have never seen the TV show "The Handmaidens Tale."
They should make it clear that this law is meant to force WHITE women, who have been having fewer babies, to produce more babies for adoption, if they don't want to or can't raise them.
Republican men seem to fear that fewer white babies mean that minorities will outnumber them. (The Alabama senators who passed this law were all Republican white men.)
This law is an attack on white women and a vicious attempt to control them.
This is probably over the head of many NYT readers but this is healthy. We are returning to our roots as a Federal Republic. Too many readers believe wrongly that the US is a democracy.
As another poster pointed out and it's worth repeating here, these forced-birth States are at the same time against any kind of gun laws amidst all the school shootings that kills the children who were born and were going to school.
2
"He pointed out that Mr. Trump has appointed several judges to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, often a crucial final stop before the Supreme Court. “We are very encouraged that we are going to have great success,” Mr. Gonidakis said."
Mr. Gonidakis is confident that the corruption of the Courts by the Fascist-Republican Senate with biased and politically motivated judges is now sufficient to force the rest of us to submit to their superstitious beliefs.
2
Dear GOP: Be careful what you wish for. This has been the Religious right's power play for 40 years. Whether or not it is truly their ultimate goal, it is the one issue on which they could mobilize their followers and gain power through the ballot box. Where do those voters go if they succeed in overturning Roe and no longer have an issue to unite behind? What happens to the Religious right if those voters lose interest should they succeed? And what does the loss of it's primary bloc do the GOP as a viable political party?
The leaders of the Religious right have to know this and I remain dubious of their real motive. Given the power and control that they 'won' in the course of their battle to overturn Roe, are they really as devoted to this outcome as the recent actions of some states would imply?
Logically thinking, wouldn't the variations of extreme laws from state to state would leave open the probability that the court would see the lack of cohesion for what it really is, a desperate, devoid of facts attempt to flood the courts, and reject them all. How unlikely is it that the leaders aren't alert to this too, and letting these scattershot approaches moved ahead and aren't solidifying behind a common strategy fully aware that every time they lose in court their "movement" lives another day.
And if this happens, when do their supporters finally begin to see that they're just pawns in a political game.
7
Just like the my replaced race as the driving issue for their base with abortion, they will find another tent pole issue to drive their base to the polls. Maybe as simply as returning to race since Trump has clearly shown that is possible. When Roe was decided opposition was mainly seen as a Catholic issue and Evangelicals praised the decision as progress on Women’s rights. Life at conception only became a thing after the Evangelicals realized they needed another issue to drive donations to their churches and increase the head-counts of their Congregations. In 1973 the Southern Baptist Coalition ran an Op-Ed praising Roe v Wade - saying “Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.
The religious right seized on anti-abortion as a political issue at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich in 1979 (a full six years post Roe v Wade) because that was seen as a more palatable issue to position with their base than their true motive - protecting segregated schools.
In fact one of the lawyers who argued for Roe before the SCOTUS - Linda Coffee was a Southern Baptist and said, “the ruling does not relieve each individual of standing behind his or her moral religious viewpoint about what a person is or when life begins. An emotional reaction to the ruling will result in a failure to distinguish between the legal principle of the decision and the moral implications now left to the doctor patient relationship.”
1
"“There’s only one way to get a case before the U.S. Supreme Court — someone has to sue us, and that happened today,” said Michael Gonidakis..."
Does anybody besides me think this is a crazy way to run a legal system? An article in the New Yorker in the 1980s complained about "agenda cases" whose real purpose was to put an issue into the Supreme Court's jurisdiction; the article failed to observe that this is the only way to challenge a ruling.
5
If a naturally occurring miscarriage happens and a woman goes to the hospital for treatment, can she receive treatment to stop the bleeding or remove parts of the miscarriage without having the physician charged as performing an abortion? If a woman goes to the hospital because of injuries resulting from a back-alley abortion that 'went wrong', can she receive treatment without having a physician charged with performing an abortion? Stuff happens, people. Women are more than conduits and should be able to get all the necessary medical care they want and need. In this instance, many ER and OB/GYN doctors might rightfully be afraid to provide necessary services. This is unacceptable.
11
"Dirty Dancing" was on TV last night and I watched it with a new perspective. As most of you know, an illegal abortion is at the heart of the story, and the character who gets it suffers terribly from it. Is this what we want to return to? Well I guess for pro-birthers, Baby is no longer in the corner...but every woman is.
14
I'm pretty sure that the internet and RU 486 rules out the possibility of a pre-Roe world. The only thing that I really worry about is the criminalizing of miscarriages like what is happening in place like El Salvador.
4
Sorry to say, but don't rest on hope that internet pharmacies are going to help you, your daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, aunts, etc.
2
Until recently I was very puzzled about why conservative zealots have such contradictory views.
They are anti-abortion, presumably because they do not want a fetus to be ripped from the security of the womb.
And yet they are in favor of immigration controls which rip children from the security of their parents’ arms.
Why?
Because extreme conservatives love one thing above all else. Punishment.
They delight and rejoice in punishment- for the commission of sins or breaking rules of any kind.
A woman who has sex out of marriage must be humiliated and punished. A woman who has sex within marriage for pleasure only must be punished. A woman who incites violent rape or desire must be punished.
Families who break immigration rules must be punished by having their children taken without records or legal recourse.
There is no love of children or life there, just an endless warped thirst for punishment.
22
I know this is stretching credulity but I am curious how many of Alabama's Republican legislators have READ "The Cider House Rules" by John Irving? My honest guess is not too many. Good movie for sure, Irving won an Oscars and made a cameo appearance but the book goes into way more detail, quite graphic at times of back-alley abortions. I am sure there are some streets in Montgomery that would suit that purpose. It seemed to work for Bill Traylor. Alabama is near the bottom of every measure of quality-of-life so I guess they are just keeping up appearances. For the life of me, the Republican lead WAR ON WOMEN and that Kay Ivey signed it makes my head explode.
7
I find it incredibly hypocritical of state governments to basically outlaw abortion because of a professed deep respect for human life and yet support the death penalty at the same time. Alabama, for instance, has the highest per capita death penalty rate in the country (more about this on wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Alabama).
5
@Will Fiveash; and like another poster pointed out, they are against any kind of gun laws amidst all the school shootings that kills the children who were born and were going to school.
3
Now that these states are taking over women's bodies and forcing them to give birth, I think they should be required to provide free child care.
9
@Joan Sutton
These states already have plenty of "child care" but they call it "prison".
3
Flashback! Baby boomer women in the "good old days" would travel to NY state for an abortion. And of course, women in any state with connections and money knew where they could get a "D & C." Yeah, talk about retro politics and phony "pro-life"concerns. Young women in America should refuse to look the other way - control of reproduction is step one in living as a free and equal citizen.
3
Alabamians claim that every life is precious but look at their prisons to see how they really feel about human beings.
Despicable.
14
Every day I thank God I had the good fortune to be born in the state of Minnesota. Even luckier would have been to be born in Norway (the home of my ancestors) at this stage of human history. And, praise God, my son and his family live in Germany, never to return.
The USA is becoming more and more unlivable. And striking down Roe vs. Wade will make it even more so. Who would have thought such cruelty, ignorance, and poverty of body and spirit would grow here in a matter of decades after the euphoria and 3 decades of wealth that followed WWII.
25
I find it almost humorous that at no time are the father's rights contemplated. We are real people too.
2
@HonestRealityGuy - What rights are you seeking?
When my ex husband left me after I got pregnant he had the right to refuse to sign the paperwork for me to give the baby up for adoption. He then proceeded to ignore the child and refuse to pay child support. Non payment of child support never even goes on a credit score.
I was left with the work, the expense and yes the toll it took on my body, not just the pregnancy but the impact of going to work only weeks after I'd given birth.
So I'll ask again. What rights are you seeking?
18
@HonestRealityGuy
Because this is about being pregnant against one's will. Would you want to be in that situation, with all that it entails? Changes to your body, doctor visits if you can afford them, possible employer issues, etc. etc. It's not always about the end result. Don't have sex with women of childbearing age if you're worried about it and find it "almost humorous".
3
Right, what if the man doesn't want a child. I knew someone who threatened suicide if girlfriend did NOT have abortion. That put her in a moral quagmire!
1
To those who want to ban all abortions, what legislation are you pushing to finance sex education in schools and free birth control? Who will pay for the children born with disabilities to parents who cannot afford their care or do not want to care for them and turn them over to the state? What assistance is there for the abused, abandoned and unwanted children born to parents/mothers? Hopefully you will vote for higher taxes as you vote for a ban on all abortions. Or better yet, give some of these children your care, home and support. They will need it and you have very strong beliefs on the sanctity of life. Try using it to help rather than dictate your beliefs to others.
16
@Ann
Republics pretend that a woman can hold an aspirin between her knees and that prevents pregnancy. It’s all good.
4
Actually the divide is between those who interpret the bible in a particular way and those who think that science and facts should govern policy. Using conservative and liberal disguises the real divide that's building in this country. That divide is between a bunch of people calling themselves conservatives who are actually just promoting their religion and those of us who prefer the constitutional protections of the first amendment which bans the establishment of a state religion. At every turn the anti abortion crowd is driven by the idea the god is on their side. They have no other argument to offer when you ban abortions one month into a pregnancy.
15
What is truly strange is how all these anti-abortion people (mostly men) claim to be so concerned about the unborn children. Of course once they are born they could not care less what happens to them. Republicans and especially evangelicals, fight tooth and nail against all proposals that would make life better for families with children. Don't listen to what they say. Look at what they do or do not do. They are anti-health care, anti-prenatal care for all, anti child care, anti-education, anti-living wage. In short Republicans and evangelicals are rabidly anti-family and anti-children. They do not do ANYTHING for children and families.
So spare me the concern about fetuses. You simply want to control people any way you can.
19
"The measures have deepened the growing divide between liberal and conservative states."
No, it is a divide between states who do and do not wish to have a war on women.
9
Making America Great Again by returning to the 1960's. Women seeking abortions in states that ban them will have to fly to NY and CA just like hundreds of women did in the 60's and 70's.
Boycott all states restricting abortions which are a decision to be made between a woman and her physician.
14
In Alabama, Governor Ivey signed the law saying it “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious, that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
Then it is fair to assume that Alabama does not enact the death penalty and takes really good care of its citizens via human services and enhanced federal programs for the poor, right?
7
And meanwhile Alabama has one of, if not the, largest number of people on death row AND is replete with guns.
There's good news in Utah at least. Salt Lake County DA, Sim Gill, said he won't prosecute the new abortion laws.
“I think that’s the only legal and ethical thing for me to do, which is not use the power of my office to violate the constitutional rights of my citizens when there is well-established precedent that says it is unconstitutional.”
By no strange coincidence, Utah's abortion clinics are both located in Salt Lake County. Conservatives were a little overzealous. They eliminated abortion so effectively before challenging Roe, there's no where left where they can challenge Roe. The new laws are effectively unenforceable.
Salt Lake County is never going to install a DA on the platform of prosecuting doctors for performing abortions legally allowed under federal law. Where ever the legal battle takes place, it isn't going to be here. The gesture was apparently symbolic.
3
Bravo, Sim Gil! A person of true good character.
We criticize China for their 1 child policy and demonize them as communists or some blend of it and socialism but we have no problem imposing religious beliefs and freedom on our own inalienable rights, beliefs, and constitutional principles to force women into choices we criticize other countries for. Hypocrisy at its best. pro-life only worry about an embryo going full term but want nothing to do with the child/baby after the fact. And, now put the mother's health and welfare at extreme risk due to an inability to be properly treated. what kind of mixed crazy message does this send? So tired of pandering to the minority of ill informed zealots who stick religious beliefs into law. What happened to separation of church and state?
6
It's time for Corporate America to step up and show their support for the wives, sisters, daughters of the United States...pull all advertising supporting a certain football conference - the one that features wildcats, bulldogs, tigers, razorbacks, and landsharks colored in crimson.
11
Sure, but what makes you think that Corporate America isn't itself largely female? Take a stand for women and for families and for religious freedom, women CEOs and other Chiefs, presidents, managers, line workers!
The Alabama law is likely to be struck down at all three levels of Federal Court.
I wonder if the motivation for a state ban on abortion isn’t partly motivated by an effort to increase a declining state population. Plainly Alabama is a state that many choose to leave for the modern world.
18
@Robert Gravatt. I can’t help but wonder whether their population would, need, increase but at the vast expense of their welfare system.
@Meg. Oops! Typo. “Need” should be “indeed.”
Fundamentally I believe it should be up to the woman about having an abortion, but frankly I don't have any strong feelings either way...certainly my vote does not depend on the abortion issue. What I do have issue with is the disproportionate influence certain groups or interests have in our politics; the majority of people in this country support a woman's right to chose, but we have the Pro-life advocates seemingly driving us to restrict abortions, clearly a minority view.
19
Safe abortions have always been available to those who can pay, and unsafe "back alley" abortions are for the poor. Just like the rest of health care, prescriptions, and preventative medicine, this law tells a huge portion of our fellow citizens to live, toil and die quietly, and not bother the rest of us.
19
As a doctor, I would never want to work in a state such as Alabama. This has nothing to do with being pro or anti abortion. This means that every time I prescribe a drug that could potentially harm a fetus to a female patient of child bearing age (from menstruation to menopause) I would need to waste time and resources doing a pregnancy test to make sure they are not pregnant. But pregnancy tests aren’t perfect and if they actually are pregnant, and they miscarry after taking my drug (which naturally occurs in 25 percent of pregnancies), I would have to worry about getting charged. You work long enough as a doctor, this will eventually happen to you. These laws simply aren’t practical on any level. These politicians and the Christian Right fail to understand that miscarriage is natural and happens very commonly. Will a bartender who may have served an alcoholic beverage unknowingly to a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant who then miscarries be liable?
49
Excellent points from a medical doctor. Such give all medical professionals pause. And restauranteurs, body workers, chefs, barkeeps, as well.
1
Where is the funding for prenatal care, for curing addicted expectant mothers, for a safe & established homes, and for taking sick children to the doctor?
Trump Republicans only bring a new stick to the well-established, Conservative's track record on WILLING expectant mothers and mothers: Leaving them to lie in the bed they made.
When increasing numbers of expectant mothers and mothers (many teenagers, still in school), can Trump Republicans even bring themselves to start speaking-up for the value of free school meals?
A commitment to every mother and their child is life affirming. The reality is that many seeking abortions - do not have the means to bear and raise a child. They are not equipped to do so. When will Trump Republicans champion the requisite assistance?
15
@Able Nommer
They never will.
They care about bullying.
7
@Able Nommer
The answer is maternal mortality. They simply let the mothers die. In Georgia, dead moms, in Alabama dead moms, in Texas, dead moms.
There is simply no way to care about "life" and let mothers and infants die or to let kids go hungry once they are on this earth. It is not about people it is about a religious belief system that absolves them of responsibility for doing something real, not blabbering about how much they care.
3
Mortality Rate live birth: 8.8 deaths/100,000
Mortality Rate in-clinic abortion: .6 deaths/100,000
Denying a woman a choice is putting her in a position that is 15 times the risk.
This is malpractice.
25
Time for the west coast, northeast and other
Blue states to let the medieval states go their own way. We can have a joint military agreement (with them finally paying their fair share) but it’s obvious we are choosing different social structures. Sadly, much of the south remains mired in the 50s. 1850s.
28
This is not just about preventing all abortions. It is really about women's sexuality and the fanatical need among religious conservatives to deny women control over their own sexuality which also means denying women power. They are so afraid of sex and think it is sinful and dirty and should only be engaged in to procreate. How dare women actually enjoy their sexuality! They think that preventing all abortions will deter women from engaging in sex unless they are married, and even then, they had better not enjoy it. How else did the myth of the "virgin" Mary start? Girls need to stay "pure" until they are married; never mind about the boys - the double standard is alive and well. Controlling women's bodies is just another way to deny their sexuality and power.
22
This is ridiculous and a no brianer, only women have the right to decide if they want to do abortion or not. Nobody else has the right to dictate this. There is no point over analysing this!
10
The Soviet Union broke apart. Why not the United States. Though it is important to find a way not to abandon those who will be seriously victimized in states--now countries-- where they live.
And of course the rest of us can't get to complacent and smug because the countries we will be living in will be filled with its own forms of oppression and exploitation.
I wonder where people like Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat and David Brooks will choose to live?
14
@Robert Roth - Why not the United States breaking up?
Probably the most important questions are:
1. Do the citizens of the USA want to have to use a passport to go to Disney World, EPCOT, and Universal, etc. in the Confederate States of America?
2. Do the citizens of the USA want to have to use a passport to go to the warmer climes in the winter? (Or will they be saved by climate change from having to escape winter?)
Otherwise there would be no loss or reason to fret except our map would no longer be whole.
@Marie
Disneyland is in Anaheim California so come on down !
2
The United States is on the road to an extremely turbulent period that may lead to civil war. I hope that is not the case. One thing is clear, our Constitution is rapidly becoming nothing more than a relic of history.
14
@Juliana; I think if it comes down to it, the "civil war" will be just an economic war. With California being a blue State and the 6th biggest economy in the world, it's obvious to me who'll have the upper hand. However I am really hoping it'll not come to that.
1
@Juliana
No need to fight a civil war, just peacefully agree to a divorce. Two new countries, red states of america and blue states of america.
3
Reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, are equality rights. If certain states are able to restrict access to abortion, then women become unequal citizens in those states, and the United States, frankly, ceases to exist. Is that the goal of the anti-choice movement?
12
@dca; I like your categorization of this group: "anti-choice". We should all embrace that name and use it to describe the so called "pro-life" ppl as if pro-choice people are anti-life! How absurd!
I fear this is the first step. Banning effective methods of contraception will be next. Sometimes I am glad I am old, but I fear for my granddaughters.
13
@joynone. Before Roe, in Griswold v Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on contraception, using the same logic it then used in Roe. Overturning Roe will likely overturn Griswold too, opening the way to a return to state bans on contraception.
4
Solutions:
Alabama doctors: Start a petition vowing to move to another state (preferably without a Republican controlled state legislature and governor.) if the law goes into effect.
Blue states: offer these doctors relocation expenses and tax incentives to open new practices in your states through your industrial development programs.
Fewer doctors is just what the Alabama politicians and the voters that elected them deserve.
20
What if... Southern states no longer accepted Brown v. Board of Ed., another supreme court decision that became the law. What if they refused to let black children attend "white" schools anymore. What if they passed a law affirming discrimination and waited for it to get to a conservative Supreme Court to be overturned? What if they didn't like Miranda rights? The Supreme Court's decisions become the force of law. You know the one that got overturned...Dred Scott that affirmed slavery. To start treating decisions that have force of law as though they were optional would create chaos in law and the lives of citizens. Nor is it a one way street. Pro-choice people can choose the most staggering injustice in anti-abortion states and head for the Supreme Court.
13
They're trying to get the young and liberals to leave the state. It's all about voter suppression for the GOP.
11
The USA is finished. Let’s not even pretend anymore.
8
“Americans United for Life?” They quickly lose interest in the “life” once the child is born. It’s hypocritical.
16
You want DRACONIAN? These people are phoning it in. How about outlawing OTC pregnancy-tests? ALL kits would be prescription-only, and all positive results registered with The State. Also, a woman seeking an abortion would be treated no differently than if she were thinking of contracting a hit-man to whack a spouse: just LOOKING for someone to do the job is punishable. Why is the act of actually HIRING someone to murder a fetus considered LESS egregious?
C'mon, Alabama, show us the true courage of your convictions! Oh yeah. You DID. A showboat stunt that'll be overturned is okay . . . political SUICIDE is off the table.
6
Back to the Middle Ages. This will effect poor women. The wealthy have always been able to get an abortion. Since the government seems to think they should have control over EVERY woman's body and personal choices; why don't we sterilize men so women won't get pregnant.
This is a disgrace.
8
I respect pro-life. I have no respect for selective “pro-life”. Seems to be a direct correlation between support for draconian anti-abortion measures and cutting off health care or any support for post-birth human life.
We really should value human life - but at least be consistent, and acknowledge the complex, conflicting decisions involved.
7
They claim to be supporting a right to life but they never said a right to a good, fair, healthy life with economic and educational opportunities. That’s not what they mean. This is not about the unborn it’s about women.
10
Particularly when it comes to medical decisions I don’t want people dictating to me, or anyone else, what doctors can and can’t do based on their religious beliefs. The first amendment is there for good reason - this law is clearly unconstitutional.
4
How is it that women are capable of not understanding the principle of autonomy. What right does the government have in anyone's uterus, or in the decisions made between her, her partner and her physician? Opinions will likely not change until the return of the bad old days of infections, infertility, perforated wombs, bleeding to death and oh, by the way, all the economic, moral and human harm done to unwanted children. We, the women of the United States are not handmaidens and do not have to be a baby factories.
10
These states wanting to ban abortions already have the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the country...a country which has the highest rate in the developed world. If these people were really all about the right to life, they’d be focused on working to reduce those deaths of actual living, breathing persons. Instead, they’re taking measures that will result in more deaths. How does this make any sense?
7
States that choose to restrict or eliminate abortions are morally obligated to institute broadly available, ongoing and generous support for the care, feeding and education of the resulting unwanted children.
15
@David Eike
If only they really had any morals.
This is all about power and bullying.
If they really cared about children, they would be willing to help the children once they are born.
4
Again how is it government’s business regarding what goes on between a woman and her doctor. No one has ever answered this question. The right wing in this country will eventually bring this country to its knees.
10
No big deal. If the good folks of Alabama want to live in the past, who am I to comment. I don't live there. If an Alabaman women manages to get pregnant and wants an abortion, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, she can always have the procedure performed in a state where abortion is legal.
@sheikyerbouti - It's a very big deal if you're poor and can't afford to travel.
8
I cannot understand a woman who supports such a law. A law that subjects women, long after Roe v Wade, once again to the will of others who assume authority over them.
What does the governor of Alabama stand to gain by signing this fascist law?
2
@julia - She stands to gain the money and power that comes with public office. It's a mistake to think that women are immune to the lure of money and power.
1
Alabama sinking backward into the Middle Ages.
2
Shame on you, sister Kay!
5
Roe appears to be headed toward a State's rights matter eventually, and no longer the law of the land. You know, let these mini Gilead Republics: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri etc etc, fall on their own swords. The best & brightest of their people will leave for the states where women's rights are at least protected law, if not yet in practice all the time.
Crush them economically with boycotts, especially sports related ones (those always seem to hit those states the hardest.) Basically, just shun them. I wouldn't spend a dime, nor a moment of my precious time in any of them. And, I have family members who live in AL.
Eventually, there'll be mass migrations from these wretched places.....and yeh, I know, what you're thinking, she lives in AZ, casting stones & all that. But, believe me when I say, that Alabama, Georgia (except Atlanta of course), Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana etc, make Arizona look good. However, if the Clown Posse AZ state legislation, gets any ideas from those idiots, I'll be joining the exodus to freedom.
9
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
If the abortion provider gets 99 years, so too should the abortion ‘provider.’ We have the DNA technology to determine the origin of the ‘donation.’
Talk about sticking your big nose in somebody else’s business, Alabama.
14
Totally agree with @itsmildeyes. The person responsible for the pregnancy (the dude) should go to the slammer if the doc is going to the slammer. What an incredibly ignorant and stupid law. I had no plans to visit Alabama anytime soon, but I can change that to ‘never’ now.
7
This Alabama law seems to be unconstitutional on its face: never mind Roe, per the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. All those right-wing zealots out there trying to make others do what they want them to do need to fall back and start taking care of their own yards.
8
Indeed, there are major, long-standing religions that explicitly state that causing the loss of a pregnancy is NOT murder and shall not be punishable as if it were murder. Also, that it actually is sinful to force a woman (or girl!) to endure a pregnancy that puts her health or safety at risk. The existence of the NIMH, among others, is testament to the fact that collectively we in in the USA recognize that mental health is part and parcel with physical health, the two are intertwined.
The question is: will the Supreme Court or Congress force individuals or entire classes of people to seriously violate their religion and, contrary to Hobby Lobby and CO Wedding Cake SCOTUS decisions, compel individual doctors, women, and girls to act in ways that are sinful according to his/her strongly held religious beliefs?
We have a "border crisis" all right. A STATE border crisis. The "united" states are becoming less so by the day.
9
Fetal heartbeat is not the key point, it is embryo vs. viable baby. If reason prevails, there is a window of 2-3 months when the cells are just cells and it is not a baby. But of course there are those who want to control/hate women, and there are those who want political capital with unholy alliances.
5
The over fifty percent of Millennials and Gen Yers who didn't vote in the 2016 election may learn to regret it. If Roe falls, then the birth control cases which preceded it are also vulnerable. Eisenstadt vs. Baird and Griswold vs Connecticut are based on the same privacy considerations as Roe.
Justice Kavanaugh has already said in his confirmation hearings that contraception is abortion. If the court feels that way they'll go for birth control too when the states decide to restrict access to birth control.
8
These abortion clinics do not care about the wellbeing of women. They only care about their bottom line and that is money. Planned Parenthood makes the majority of their profit from abortions. This has been a cash cow for them for years and if they were to lose this profitable service their revenue would drop considerably. The other services they offer women provide only a pittance of what abortions do. They need this to pay their top executives the exorbitant salaries they have been getting over the years.
Planned Parenthood talks about reproductive rights but abortion does not fall into that category. It is anything but when they are terminating the life of the unborn. The more abortions they provide the better for them. It is all about the almighty dollar and nothing else. They are a sham but many of us have known this all along.
1
KMW - Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization. Nothing in your statements is based on facts.
23
You are sadly, and dangerously, mistaken
17
@KMW - abortion is legal and it is also legal for nonprofits to have revenue streams. Name one single organization (for profit or nonprofit) that does not wish to make money. That does not negate the fact that they do indeed care deeply for the health of millions of women in America. Their mission is honorable and their work is perfectly aligned with the laws of our country.
9
So how do we as woman fight this. How can we get organized to protect our rights? Demonstrating doesn't work.
1
The timing of the states passing antiabortion laws reminds me of the timing of pro-slavery states leaving the Union - America must get ready for a bitter civil war
3
To play the Devil’s advocate ....
What if reproductive age females in Alabama did a mass exodus?
I hope the legislative knows that those societies where there is male and female %age disparity eventually destabilize and disappear. Often a violent end.
4
I think it would be for each state not to interfere with another state’s laws in this matter.
Today blue states want to over-turn anti abortion laws based on a constitutional right to bodily autonomy. Tomorrow, red states will try to impose anti-abortion laws under a theory of equal protection.
There is no end point to these arguments because both are reasonable based on different assumptions that can not be proven either way.
This argument is destructive. Having each state decide this matter democratically is the best outlet. If you live in Alabama and want an abortion, drive to another state for that once in a lifetime procedure. If you live in New York and you can’t tolerate the moral bankruptcy of allowing abortion on demand, go live in Alabama our change the minds of your fellow New Yorkers.
The Supreme Court is no better at determining these moral issues than the legislators of the various states. It does suffer one great disadvantage, it’s decisions impose a uniform solution across the country increasing friction.
18
@SG "once in a lifetime procedure"? You're a man, aren't you?
19
@SG Why stop there? Slavery, the right to vote, 2nd Amendment, taxation, freedom of religion.......by your argument, all of it should be left up to the states.
The Supreme Court decided this matter nearly 50 years ago.
40
@SG, so you have a problem with "one nation indivisable"?
14
None of this should come as any surprise, Trump shared his views on Roe v. Wade during his campaign. Of course, it was only to appease his base. Trump was "pro-choice" until he decided he was a Republican. There are videos of Trump on YouTube speaking as a Democrat and as a pro-choice American. Bottom line, elections have consequences. Democrats have plenty of ammunition for the 2020 election. Whether they can convey it effectively and galvanize voters is another matter.
14
After all, this is the logic of the anti-abortion movement. If you create a mystification based on a spiritual belief that a non-sentient non-viable being has some sort of "soul," (as opposed to a living cat, say) then there is no difference between one second after fertilization, and eight or ten weeks. It would be absurd to claim that that "soul" just switches on sometime in the second trimester. Why? And why should it matter if rape or incest is involved?
Of course, both the reasoning and result are horrific, as well as the prospect that the Supreme Court will strip away this right.
But at least it makes it clear what this fight is about.
3
If this does not get every single woman with an ounce of self-respect to go to the polls and vote out every single Republican-nothing will. I am looking at all of you Bernie Sanders fans who stayed home in 2016. THIS is on you as well!
13
Stop buying Coca Cola products They are based in Georgia. Ask your local restaurants and markets to stop carrying them, and to stop using shrimp, peaches, corn, and other food from these anti-women, anti-family, anti-1st Amendment of the US Constitution states.
13
@BOYCOTT ALABAMA GEORGIA OHIO
and don't forget about Missouri! I'm so angry that the state legislature passed a similar bill here this morning.
Please, everyone in Missouri, contact your state representatives in the house and senate, and don't forget to urge the governor to veto these ridiculous bills!
https://www.senate.mo.gov/LegisLookup/Default.aspx
https://governor.mo.gov/contact-us
3
Add to this Daimler Benz, Hyundai , and Honda. And any car made in Alabama.
On the subject of abortion rights, the States are following the lead of legalized marijuana. Because the U.S. Congress is no longer an effective legislative body, the States have gone ahead and done things their own way. It's also an end-run on Obama care, as Federalized insurance programs will become a patchwork quilt of State health care laws.
2
"In Alabama, Governor Ivey signed the law saying it “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious, that every life is a sacred gift from God.”"
So I guess Alabama will abolish the death penalty? Talk about hypocrisy.
14
@ Bob Parker
Complete hypocrisy! They will not outlaw the death penalty anymore than they will oppose war, & the military.
5
@Bob Parker There are actually scheduled executions TODAY. The hypocrisy is mind boggling.
7
@Bob Parker Not to mention what does god have to do with it? Absolutely nothing, simply because there isn't one.
2
It is widely known that restricting access to legal and safe abortion disproportionately impacts the poor: those with the means will fly to a state that doesn't hate women should they need abortion.
What these laws will do is lead to more babies from poor people, those that don't want children or are too young/immature to care for a baby. In the worst cases, it will lead to increased birth rates of special needs children.
If that is the type of population growth that Georgia, Alabama, et al want for their states who are the rest of us to say otherwise?
2
What is with all these references to “God’s will” we keep hearing? I didn’t think God was such a micro manager. And don’t people have free will? The hypocrisy of any religion assuming they understand how God thinks. Kind of like a cat understanding how humans think.
7
@Karen I think my cat understands me all too well, but religion in general and Christianity in particular has done way more harm than good. The vote in Alabama is proof of that.
2
Looking at this, I get the same feeling I did reading about Spanish Inquisition!
Alabama is criminalizing physicians and women who want to abort, in accordance with SC approved laws— at least as of now.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now...
This is white Christians trying to make sure their birth number which have been on a steady decline in last 40 years, trying to maintain that.
As a physician I can tell you this... abortion was there more than 2000 years ago, it will be there long after you’re gone. Any place in the world I have worked- I’ve worked in three continents, where abortion was outlawed, we saw evidence of botched ones on a regular basis, or were told by patients they had one in past.
Pause... think rationally, have a conversation with women, a discourse maybe, take a referendum for heavens sake... but this is like poking a giant stick in a queen beehive!
As if this country needs more division and chaos.
13
And no mention of the many reasons why women (and couples) seek an abortion. For instance in the case of severe fetal abnormality an abortion is a legitimate choice. I assure other commenters that sometimes both the mom and dad make this decision and it's painful but not regretted. This right needs to be private between healthcare provider and family/woman.
122
@MKP
My dear MKP, there wasn’t enough words left!
But thank you all the same.
Anyone who presumes, it is a decision taken lightly by a woman or a couple, needs a reality check.
2
Not to mention that abortion was legal when the Constitution was written & adopted. "Original intent," anyone?
2
If these lawmakers are sincere that the purpose of these draconian laws is to protect the sanctity of life, they should pass companion laws that would require: all men to submit to paternity tests; all fathers to pay child support retroactive to conception; companies to issue life insurance to embryos; additional tax credits to pregnant women; penalize employers that do not pay embryos for appearing to work with their host-bodies; provide a civil cause of action against men who cause unwanted pregnancies, etc., etc.
11
My guess is that within the decade, the vast majority of all state and national elected officials in this country, at least in the blue states, will be women...to make sure that they can protect their rights and lives from religious cultists and so-called "conservative" men on the Supreme Court.
15
One can only hope that you are correct, Cowboy.
3
@Cowboy Marine: Sorry to disappoint you, but often the most fanatic religionists are women.
3
Can we just break up this country into the United Democratic States and the United Republican States already? I'm pretty sure both sides would be happier. AllI ask is that the Democratic States implement severe immigration restrictions.
22
Let the electoral college in 2020 be the determining factor.
That would serve Putin very well.
2
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is a court with five devout Roman Catholic men who have been put on the court and sought all their lives to be put on the court with one abiding purpose: Nullification of Roe v. Wade.
They intend to do it, they will do it and they will do it in an election year knowing they have the votes whether Trump does or does not have the votes for reelection.
Watch and see if Thomas does not retire at the end of this term to guarantee one more anti-choice seat on the court for another 30 years or more.
Nullification is and has been a project of the RepublicanParty for more than 40 years. It has been their plan to do it.
And they are going to and there is no law in it, there is only religious intolerance in it.
Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are not judges. They are clerics who should take off their robes to reveal the collars they disguise.
29
Abortion tourism is what will be achieved from some states blocking access and others allowing it.
Due to costs, however, not all women will be able to access states who allow it if they are wish to have one. This will put the financial burden on restrictive state who will now have to pay for support if the mother is not able to while the states that offer it may profit from the out of state abortion seekers.
It will be a quagmire regardless.
4
In other words, we'll return to the pre Roe world and women who cannot travel will risk their lives with illegal or self abortions. Overturning Roe won't stop abortions. It will just stop safe legal abortions for most women in the US.
131
@Zigzag
Why don't pro-abortion advocates start a charity to help poor women reach clinics, since they think that is so important? Instead they keep lobbying for government subsidies. Hillary Clinton wrecked her proposed health plan in the 1990s by trying to use it as cover for abortion funding.
@Lona You are very much correct, unfortunately. We talk about the act of abortion ad nauseam, but rarely talk about stopping the CAUSES of abortion.
1
Such issues including abortion, climate change, even GMO controversy and polarization of American society on those issues are directly connected with religious fundamentalism, religious superstitions and utter ignorance. That in turn is directly related to systematic destruction of our public education system in one hand and promotion of private schools (mostly religious, read Christian fundamentalist) in the country since Reagan. For last many years USA has the worst level of understanding of basic scientific facts and ideas among all 35 developed countries, as published in 2006. It was measuring percentage of college graduated who deny hard science of evolution and "strongly believe" myth of creationism or "intelligent design".
Rise of right wing, christian fundamentalists became possible for that which is also related to white supremacy. Even many influential and "highly educated" elites in the USA (including some Supreme Court judges) strongly believe in those racist and religious fundamentalist ideologies.
If anyone really want to make America even what it was (forget being great), s/he must strengthen public education and STEM so that future generations can rise above such petty controversies and work to make this country what it deserve.
10
Just take a look at all the damage and potential damage this Administration has done and will do that will take, maybe decades to reverse.
I thank all you folks that ... didn't vote, voted 3rd party in protest, voted for Trump because they were trying to send a message about how both parties "marginalized" them over the years.
11
Who says it will be reversed? I am 62 and my entire adult life has been lived in a society sliding rightward and toward entropy, contempt for the poor and theocracy. Pendulum swing talk is whistling past the graveyard.
5
I am proposing legislation that would mandate all males at the age of 12 recieve a vasectomy. That should reduce the abortion rate substantially and is not medically dangerous to the Male, as forced pregnancy is life threatening.
30
I fear that even if Roe stays intact, it may not make much difference. I know for years in Tennessee they've been chipping away, passing laws requiring doctor's to have admitting privileges, long waiting periods and various other measures with the very intended effect of making it practically impossible to get an abortion in this state, especially if you're poor or working class. And they're far from alone. Overturning Roe is the holy grail for these radical Christian extremists, but anti-choice zealots have already made great strides to restrict abortion, even as it has remained legal.
87
Those who oppose abortion would have an air-tight case if they supported progressive causes that actually decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies and decrease the number of preventable deaths worldwide through poverty, violence and lack of access to good health care. Fact is, most opposed those kinds of policies as well, so they lose me right out of the gate. Fact is, abortion numbers decreased under Obama.
15
@Syliva Exactly, and it is mind boggling to me that so many who oppose abortion also object to contraception.
4
Pace the braying of Biden and the platitudes of Pelosi, Roe is clearly not "settled law" in the minds of "We, the People" who, ultimately, are the judges of what the Constitution means.
@JOHN: Your people are in the minority. About two-thirds of Americans are in favor of Roe vs. Wade.
5
The Electoral College must end. Half the population already lives in just 9 of the fifty states. If current trends continue half will live in only six or seven states in another 20 years. The tyranny of the minority to dictate to the majority will continue. And we will have another Civil War.
23
The only thing Atwood got wrong was that Gilead would be in the Northeast.
8
Let's see. Alabama has the death penalty and the people there love their guns. Not to mention the horrible conditions in the prisons in Alabama. There seems to be a strange disconnect with the people in Alabama Pro-life? I think not.
16
I had no idea the Religious Right had such a strangle hold on the deep south. If they influence the Supreme Court to di the same, we're in trouble. I don't mean the abortion issue, I mean everything else. I don't want those guys having any say in anything I do.
5
It's not the Deep South. Iowa enacted a fetal heartbeat abortion ban which was overturned in court.
3
Liberal Hollywood should spearhead the boycott, since many films are made in Georgia.
8
Look at a world map of abortion laws. We join (Alabama joins) Africa, the Midleast and most of South America on women’s rights on this issue.
5
Kavanaugh said he wouldn't overturn Roe vs Wade to Republican Susan Collins to get her vote. Was he lying?
11
@terri smith: Yes, he was lying.
2
@terri smith Yes. I mean we know he is a liar. Why would he be honest about this? He would not be on SC if he were not willing to overturn it.
And Susan Collins is a disgrace.
6
Whenever they get themselves in serious political trouble, they pull this mutilated old rabbit back out of the hat.
4
I suspect that this isn't about protecting fetuses. It's about religion and control of women and a denial of our civil rights. People who really want to end abortion would make sure that women are protected from unwanted pregnancy. If they were really serious they would make sure that fathers of unwanted pregnancies were treated just as badly as the mothers. We do have the technology now to prevent pregnancy and identify fathers. Lets use it.
16
Make no mistake; this is not about protecting life, or there would be Medicare for All, abolishment of the death penalty, and better social support for families. This is about vengeance for Original Sin. Religion has felt the need to control women’s urge for self-determination since the dawn of time, blaming her and every woman since for leading Adam to eat that beautiful, delicious forbidden fruit. We have been oppressed and controlled ever since. Listen up, Religion: women have awakened, and we are more determined than ever!
20
If Roe is overturned, the birth control cases that preceded it are vulnerable to challenge since all are based on the same privacy considerations. I can see Republican state legislatures restricting birth control on grounds that it facilitates promiscuity.
2
This Court seems quite capable of using some reading of the 14th Amendment to eliminate abortion rights in states that try to protect them.
1
"Abortion at any stage will be outlawed, except where the pregnancy poses a serious health risk to the woman."
As a man, I can only imagine what it would feel like to be carrying a child as a result of rape or incest, let alone an unplanned pregnancy. I could imagine that I would feel extreme pain, despair and depression. In fact, after looking ahead after the birth of a child, and the unplanned and unwanted repercussions for the rest of my life, I could imagine I might feel as if I couldn't go on and just want to die.
I could imagine a compassionate community would help me get the urgent medical attention I need to evaluate for possible suicidal risk. And if properly documented, and at the prospect of remaining in this acute state of risk for the next nine months, it would be clear that my life would be in imminent danger.
So as I imagine this horrible dilemma of having become pregnant as the result of a violent and/or unwanted act, and as I contemplate the prospect of that pregnancy affecting the rest of my life, I would imagine that this would indeed cause me to plunge into life-threatening despair.
So given the new law of the land, please respect and support my decision to terminate this pregnancy to ensure the viability of MY life.
Doctors, sharpen your pens. We are going to need you to ensure the safe passage of our female citizens through these darkened times.
Again, I am just using my imagination.
5
What can we do to fight this??? (Other than voting for Democrats in every election.) I am so tired of feeling helpless in the face of the persistent attack on the rights of women and minorities in this country. This particular legislation can only be characterized as evil - it’s our duty and obligation to help the people it is targeting. But HOW??
8
If Alabama and other states are serious in their dedication to fetal rights, surely they've included in their legislation a provision for mandatory child support from the impregnator from conception on through the pregnancy and beyond as well, right? Maternity clothes, doctor's appointments, healthy food, prenatal vitamins, being able to afford to be home sick from work, etc., are necessary for a healthy outcome. They don't come cheap.
13
I'm embarrassed to have been born in this backwards state. But I don't live there, I don't want to go back, and I never will. It seems like every day brings a new embarrassment to the country as a whole that allows Alabama to be a part of our Union.
11
Thank you Sister Joan!
Sister Joan Chittister’s comments on the pro-life movement
“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
20
From the article: In Alabama, Governor Ivey signed the law saying it “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious, that every life is a sacred gift from God.”
From Wikipedia: Alabama has the highest per capita death penalty rate in the country. In some years, its courts impose more death sentences than Texas, a state that has a population five times as large.
14
Banning abortion makes America great again!
More unwanted children means more for the therapists, the corporate prisons, the drug companies...and that's just for the children.
Banning abortion is a huge opportunity to create more anger in the world and fuel demand for cheap food (for the people who can't afford to rear the children). And did I mention prisons and therapists?
It's great for the churches who can lure people saddled with despair in for solace. It's great for the housing industry too.
Who is it not good for? Humanity. But there's no money to be made off of that.
It's amazing that the people who are so cruel to make a new life unwanted by a mother at a higher priority than the mother who has already been "killed" by a rape or incest to then suffer a lifetime of remembering that. Who are these people? Please: put some Ukranian intelligence on uncovering their cobwebs and secrets.
6
We need to stop using the phrase “pro-life.” Until these groups put their money where their mouths are by accepting personal responsibility for all the long-term consequences of these draconian laws, they have no right to call themselves anything but pro-birth.
11
Women from Alabama need to be offered safe passage out, places to live and jobs in states that welcome women making their own decisions.
Since the only safe sex in Alabama is among those who can’t get pregnant, it can be a new home for those over fifty and all those in same sex marriages who don’t want children.
6
Call this what it is-- a war on women, aided and abetted by women and men. It is absolutely disgusting. It makes me sick to think that we will treat our young women like reproductive vessels. They should have dominion over their reproductive organs. The existing laws are just fine. These draconian changes disenfranchise women. If you want women to opt for complete sterilization, keep it up. Having kids is no picnic, I have two I love, but I would choose none over having my life determined by a youthful pregnancy. Maybe we just need women to stand up and say okay then-- let's stop having babies altogether. Sound crazy. It's not. Most young people today don't want kids.
4
Beyond the obvious theocratic implications, I'm fascinated by the utter short-sightedness of these proscriptions, particularly for Georgia and it's business gem, Atlanta. Why would a company relocate or keep a headquarters there? What top corporate talent would fail to weight a job offer in Georgia differently now given the heavy restrictions on being female? What educated child will return to or stay in the area? What doctors will want to practice there with the abortion police reviewing all they do with reproductive health? In addition to being misogynist, this is just plain stupid.
14
Alabama logic: no abortion even in the event of rape or incest, but everyone gets guns and the death penalty is a-okay.
I’ve come to despair for this country. Perhaps NY and CA (the states upon which states like Alabama feed off of monetarily) should secede.
20
Wow...She even wore Aunt Lydia, Gillead red for the women’s oppression legislation signing.
13
Every fetal life is sacred, according to Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, etc...So it's striking that those three states have the highest rates of infant mortality in the nation, almost double that of most blue states. In 2016, those three states somehow let 2,349 infants die at birth or shortly after. Mothers fare no better. Georgia ranked last of 50 states in maternal mortality in 2006, with a rate of 20.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Now it's 37.2 maternal deaths per 100,000. That’s worse than Uzbekistan. “It’s kind of ridiculous when you’re worse than the state of Mississippi,” said a Georgia state legislator. It really is a war on women and their actual children.
18
forcing the innocent to bear pain and the shame of undeserving men
14
From the article: “In Alabama, Governor Ivey signed the law saying it ‘stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious, that every life is a sacred gift’.”
However, in a CBS news report yesterday, “A Justice Department investigation found conditions in Alabama's prisons violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Some of the 2,600 photographs taken inside Alabama's prisons show horrid conditions. Betty Head's 31-year-old son died after trying to hang himself in a decrepit cell block. ‘The Alabama prison system killed my only son,’ Head said.”
So in Alabama, the definition of a “person” includes a zygote, but not a individual biped organism who resides in a prison - they are not “persons”! This is simply barbaric.
27
In 2015, an estimated 1,670 children died from abuse and neglect in the United States.
Nearly 700,000 children are abused in the U.S annually. An estimated 683,000 children (unique incidents) were victims of abuse and neglect in 2015, the most recent year for which there is national data.
The youngest children were most vulnerable to maltreatment. Children in the first year of their life had the highest rate of victimization of 24.2 per 1,000 children in the national population of the same age.
Of the children who experienced maltreatment or abuse, three-quarters suffered neglect; 17.2% suffered physical abuse; and 8.4% suffered sexual abuse. (Some children are polyvictimized—they have suffered more than one form of maltreatment.)
About four out of five abusers are the victims’ parents. A parent of the child victim was the perpetrator in 78.1% of substantiated cases of child maltreatment.
During 2011-2014, the pregnancy-related mortality ratios were:
12.4 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women.
40.0 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women.
17.8 deaths per 100,000 live births for women of other races.
And over the past 2 decades, maternal mortality rates have doubled.
More than 12 million children in the United States live in "food insecure" homes.
The number of children in the United States without health insurance jumped to 3.9 million in 2017 from about 3.6 million the year before.
But let’s focus on criminalizing abortion.
28
@Patty O - Good luck finding a single right winger who will care about any of these children.
6
I think these laws should include mandatory DNA testing of the child and father. While many fathers of aborted fetus’ are known, many are not. That way the child will immediately have 2 parents to be legally, morally and financially responsible for it.
13
Humans who have power have a long history of caging, dominating, and torturing those who have less power.
As it relates to women and abortion, male humans have a long history of viewing women as property, as brood mares, as "vessels" for fetuses, as receptacles and recreational objects.
We must remember that until the suffragette movement in the USA, women were given full constitutional citizenship and human rights.
The attack on abortion and contraceptive rights is an attack on fertile women by people so brutally domineering that they force gestation and childbirth on women who have been raped or are the victim of incest.
Outlawing abortion is tantamount to telling someone, "I'm forcing you to endure one of the most painful and injurious things a woman can endure. I'm forcing you to birth the children of rape and incest."
It's not "pro-life." It's sick.
19
Notice the rush to do this now? It's because women are finally rising up politically to take their rightful place and the old patriarchal clowns are trying to cement their superiority. No offense but it seems that America is so far behind in women's rights, minority rights, health care, the fight against climate change etc. It's as if there's a small group of billionaires that profit from social chaos by changing economic conditions in their favour as the social chaos ensues!
19
Kay Ivey says "every life is precious and a gift from God." My question is, "At what point does it stop being precious?"
And if it stops being precious and worthy of protection, who decides that? Why does Alabama have the death penalty?
It seems the most religious and godly people are the very ones who usurp God's place by deciding who will live and who will die. Wow.
9
a couple questions I would like to understand:
if abortion is murder, why aren't the anti-abortion groups handing out condoms on every street corner?
what are these groups doing to support these kids after they are born?
13
Why are they not screaming - “MURDER” - at the hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs thrown away by the IVF industry? By their definition (not mine, or any rational one premised in science), are those not lives lost? Apparently they only care about the “life” of a fertilized egg if it is in a womb. So clearly this is about the oppression and control of women not really about any deeply held religious belief about when “life” begins.
7
Each day we ever-more reveal our incompatibilities and thus our potential mutual betterment in being apart. Why the conservative “natural lawyers” cannot just make decisions for themselves rather than for all is simply beyond me.
Someone please reply to this comment and share what is clearly SOOOOO hard about making personal choices rather than mandating those choices for everyone else?
If one doesn’t want a gay lover, DON’T TAKE ONE! If one doesn’t see an abortion as their only path forward, DON’T HAVE ONE! Seriously….it’s just that simple!!!
Yes it can be intellectualized that someone could see their having an abortion as an unconscionable perversion with which they could not live. But for others an abortion could as easily have all the emotional attachment of an appendectomy or a haircut. So why not let others be, well….others?
If this march backward into those glory days of the dark ages does not stop, we will continue to erode the right of choice for all but the most restrictive among us and enshrine bigotry and repression as the law of the land.
James Baldwin had it right when he asked “What Happens to a Dream Deferred.” and then wondered the answer aloud. We need to either peacefully partition this country NOW before our respective militias take to the streets in advance of our next full-on civil war, or acknowledge that our times’ equivalent of Ft. Sumter has already been fired upon and begin preparing for those consequences.
It’s just that real!
6
How ironic, you are essentially saying "live and let live".
Well the christians have finally taken over the country. These are dark days when men can once again control the most intimate aspects of women's lives. It is more important than ever for people to get out and vote.
15
@Vivien Hessel - They aren't Christian in the true sense of the word.
7
The boycott voices have yet to be heard, but when they start, they will be loud and strong against the economies of ‘Bama and Georgia.
7
Yes, I'll be eating NJ peaches this summer and from now on, and giving up coca-cola products. Already contacted state government to voice support for state-wide ban on government business in or to or through Alabama. And will pay extra to avoid connecting flights or products made in Ohio.
6
I think that this is actually pretty healthy. Abortion policy was heading towards being a states' rights issue instead of a Constitutional right until the Supreme Court jumped in and discovered an implicit new right to privacy, and that likely would have led to multiple outcomes based on community and public policy decisions and politics. The problem with Federal rights in the age of a neutered Congress and an unfettered President is that they are subject to immense swings in policy and application, and that the fight has been a major driver in politicizing the Court and partially delegitimizing the rule of law.
@John
Not everyone believes men having heart attacks should receive medical care. Most of us actually believe it’s a natural process, the Will of God, and we believe nature should run it’s course.
In fact, my religion insists I should not have to support institutions that revive men dying of heart attacks.
But, it’s a very contentious issue. For that reason perhaps we should leave it to state rights.
I’m pretty sure your state is one where my religious beliefs are upheld, not yours.
Too bad.
3
I fail to see what the anti-abortion people really want. They SAY they respect life - but then enact laws and budgets that basically create a permanent underclass after the "life" leaves the mother. They SAY they respect mother's health - but then make health care unaffordable or unavailable.
I don't think anyone believes that abortion is a good choice. But for some it is the only choice in the face of the cost of having, caring for, and raising a child. It is a choice I am sure no one makes quickly or lightly.
It seems that it might be a good idea - if less abortions is their goal - to actually figure out why people have them and then combat those issues. That seems like the logical thing to do.
But the anti-abortion folks have never been logical. Or rational.
11
I understand that different states have wildly different views on the moral implications of most abortions. Some consider abortion murder and others an exercise of bodily autonomy. This really is an area where reasonable people can disagree.
But why are people in pro-choice states so hung up on laws in pro-life states? Aren’t we better off letting each state live by its own standards? People in Alabama think this is murder. Why should New Yorkers force their morals on them?
2
SG this is a great question. I think this is because many folks in favor of reproductive justice (“choice”) see the cause in a moral light. Like slavery.
6
@SG Not every citizen in Alabama believes abortion is murder. #mandatoryvasectomies
7
Because the people in Alabama are using this law to force the United States Supreme Court to weigh in on this decision with the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. If that happens it will affect us all. And based on your logic, why don't people in their own homes make decisions for their own lives? It's about CHOICE and body autonomy, i.e. worry about yourself.
5
Imagine a society that values innocent life, irrespective of religious views? Religion sometimes muddies the waters. At our core, we should value innocent life.
3
@Jo Anne who defines “innocent?” Does this imply that women who become pregnant but don’t want to see the pregnancy through for whatever reason are guilty if something? Who gets to assign morality in this situation?
12
@Meg My argument is that we need a fundamental shift in how we value life. Valuing life can lead one to make better decisions. That decision could be to use birth control so an unwanted pregnancy doesn’t occur. It could be the decision to not violently rape a woman or to sexually abuse a child. If we value our existence and the existence of others, so much would change in our world. Maybe valuing the lives of unborn children is a starting point.
Joann, what exactly do you mean by "innocent"? And if you want to walk your talk, you should convert to Jainism - a religious group that doesn't eat root vegetables, such as carrots, because doing so ends the life of the plant and harvesting it might accidentally cause the loss of life of tiny insects or worms in the surrounding soil. Now that's some respectable protection of innocent life.
11
In addition to demeaning women as merely carriers of babies, the anti-abortion bills further diminish women by punishing (presumably male) doctors, rather than the women seeking abortions. Thus, women are viewed as not competent to make decisions. During the 2016 campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump mentioned punishing women for having abortions, as opposed to their doctors for performing them, a cry of horror went up from the anti-abortion establishment.
I see the anti-abortion bills as Big Government establishing certain religious views as official government-sponsored religion, in violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause.
6
We can expect obstetricians to begin leaving the state.
It’s unlikely they will want to stick around and see if they get prosecuted for treating an ectopic pregnancy.
2
It's so telling that you presume that the doctors are/will be male.
And the doublespeak of your comment would make Orwell proud.
I hope that all the able bodied and financially secure women who want to be treated as a human being instead of just a birthing incubator can move out of Alabama do so. There are plenty of women, as evidenced in these comments, who are pro-life and feel that what Alabama has done is a move in the right direction and there's really nothing that will change their minds. They should be the only ones who are subjected to this law though. If you're able to get out of the state, do so as soon as possible.
10
After season one of Hulu's "A Handmaid's Tale," I scoffed. That couldn't possibly happen. Could it? After season 2 and following the various State's 2019 legislative sessions, I un-scoffed. And it's not just the abortion legislation. Kansas, for instance, introduced a bill to reduce any marriage other than traditional marriage to "parody" status stripping out all constitutional protections for non-traditional marriages. Republicans have become masters of re-districting to ensure their monopolistic grip on government. Checks and balances are fading. Our constitution is facing a serious crisis. Take a little time to research what's happening state by state. Regardless your political leanings, you must be alarmed by this power grab and the breach that's taking place with separation of church and state. When you see a single party making a full frontal in your face assault on the constitution, you recognize what they understand about their elevated power. The scales are tipping too far. It's not good for average Americans, Democrats or Republicans. The quiet majority aligned closer to the political center needs to understand it's up to them to restore balance and secure our constitutional republic before it's too late. The people of Kansas recognized the danger in time and flipped it's largest congressional districts and governorship. Otherwise, we'd have beaten Alabama to the punch and sent every non-Christian non-heterosexual packing. I'm afraid and I'm a white male.
12
I wonder when activists fighting these antediluvian laws will bring their fight to the many prominent corporations that have their headquarters or significant operations in states like Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, et al.
Such as Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot in Atlanta. Hyundai and Mercedes Benz in Alabama, Kroger, Limited Brands, Nationwide Insurance and Proctor & Gamble in Ohio. Does the management of these companies want their female employees working and living in a place that treats them no better than a corn cob?
And by the way, which person in a majority of households makes the consumer choice decisions? Why, women, of course.
13
As we look to 2020, I’ve been concerned about the priorities of white women and how they will rally and vote when so much is at stake for ALL women in the upcoming elections. After all, a majority of white women laid out the red carpet for 45. This decision does not inspire much confidence that we are in for any change. Frankly, it also does not surprise me that a woman signed this through. Men may have brought this forward, but let’s not look away from who swung the sword. What a disappointment.
3
Let the SC overturn RvW. It will push more votes the Dems way. The female gap for the GOP will grow bigger. It would push Congress to address abortion and put GOPers in purple districts and states in a real bind. Let see how those GOP House members elected from CA districts sweat. You know those districts are prochoice but don't see abortion as really threatened to consider it when voting. Those female GOP Senate members?
2
Republicans care about children at only two point in the child's life.
1) When they're a fetus still in the womb and of course not a person of any kind.
2) When the child turns eighteen and can join the military.
In between they could care less. The only exception being if they are a young minority individual who can be sent to prison.
12
These anti-abortion people are not pro-life, they are pro-birth and anti-woman.
6
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament (Flo Kennedy)
8
I don't understand:
1. Ban abortion
2. Support Capital Punishment
Both by the same people!
13
Maybe it’s just time to secede from the Union. We really ought to be three countries. Texas can just be Texas, the red state south to Midwest can be the new Confederacy and the blue coasts and Midwest will stay the USA. Then you can all sit there in your red states with your theocracy government, no longer in violation of the Constitutional provisions of the USA on liberty, privacy, and separation of Church and State. You can have your slavery premised in gender just like you once had and still overtly have your slavery premised on race. Good luck without all the money from the Blue States now subsidizing your economies. We’ll be up here getting our agricultural products from Brazil and Canada our oil from the Middle East, and our manufactured goods from China, while you mire in your self induced poverty, moralizing, and anti-liberty, anti-opportunity agendas. We’ll build that wall you all so desperately want, but to keep YOU out of OUR country. The Constitution is in shambles, the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves, and all the Red States are straight on their way to government imposed religion, and fascist slavery of their citizens. If we can’t actually split - vote Democrat in every election, but also vote with your feet (move out of these states if you can), and with your wallets (do not support any businesses that do business in these states, do not go to university there, do not spend any tourist dollars there, boycott them all and make it hurt).
25
Hypocrisy is at an all time high in Alabama, they passed a law to out-law abortion but still have the death penalty on the books.
8
They can pass all the laws they want. Abortion will not go away.
2
@BTO With executions scheduled for today!
1
We are going to become two different countries...red and blue. This kind of division doesn't make us stronger as a nation. Everyone needs to be more tolerant of other people's beliefs. If you don't like abortion, great, don't have one. What GOP run states are doing here is painful and will not do anything but harm and weaken our country by further dividing it. Even if they succeed (and that is a big if), people will still get abortions. They will either go to a blue state or a back alley. You can't take away what is already out there anymore than liberals can take away guns. We can not go back in time. Only path is forward.
6
A question. If a decision by the Supreme Court becomes the law of the land, how can state laws go against such a law?
2
Abortion was legal in several states before Roe. Roe legalized it nationwide. If the SCOTUS merely overturned Roe in a ruling that indicated abortion was not a Federally protected Constitutional right, states could still legalize it. The more dangerous route would be if the SCOTUS went so far as to decide the potential life of a non independently viable fetus was afforded Constitutional right which would effectively ban abortion nationwide. Which may be where we are ultimately headed (and where the religious extremists would like to go), because I don’t understand how a ruling in the first case doesn’t then result in a violation of the equal protection under the law which is also in the Federal Constitution.
1
@Frank Casa Roe v Wade prevents states from banning abortion. If it were overturned, states would be permitted to ban abortion, not required.
1
"Sometimes people just want something. Social movements can take on a life of their own." How can The New York Times let this quote from anti-abortion activist Samuel Lee stand without context or analysis?
Only a small, disproportionately vocal minority of Americans "want this," and they are getting it via cynical manipulation and leverage of our governmental machinery. 69% of us do not want to see Roe v Wade overturned (Pew, December 2018). 57% think abortion should be legal in "all or most" cases (Pew, 2017). Gallup found last year that 79% of Americans think abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances.
What is happening in these state legislatures is not a popular "social movement." It's a coup. A coup against not only women's rights, but popular will.
10
On Morning Joe this AM Willie Geist said polls show 18% of Democrats support 3rd trimester abortions, consider me in that percentage, as a man I don’t believe I have any right to opine on what a woman does in her health care choices.
While I detest what Alabama and other states are trying to do in making abortion so difficult, I don’t understand the supposedly pro-life people who want to confer personhood to all fetuses then want exceptions carved out for rape and incest.
What makes those embryos less precious than the one conceived by the high school quarterback and head cheerleader in the back of daddy’s Chevy Silverado after a Friday Night Lights victory?
5
To this date I have not heard how dangerous it is for a 12 yr old or younger child to carry a fetus. Her small ,undeveloped pelvic structure precludes a safe and medically sound pregnancy and delivery. Where is the medical community and the AMA in this discussion and why are they not protesting to the utmost. These are poor and threatened children whose lives have now been destroyed . If they live through it. Your religious beliefs are now possibly homicidal. Keep your twisted beliefs where they belong. in your home and church. The womb is not your provenance.
31
@Deirdre Mack Pregnancy and childbirth are full of risk, much more than (legal) abortion, and you are right this is rarely discussed. Not to mention the cost of appropriate prenatal (and postnatal) care (which I am sure the proponents of these bills are not addressing). Risks to a 12 yr old are more horrific to contemplate, but healthy adult women can also face grave risks.
9
Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai all manufacture cars in Alabama. If you buy one you are supporting this oppression.
26
There is such irony in Governor Ivey citing “Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,” as she signed the bill banning abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Alabamians, who for more than a century conducted public lynchings with impunity as a form of local entertainment, have never impressed with a “deeply held belief that every life is precious.”
28
@Spencer Knapp Not to mention the irony in talking about how every "life" is precious the day before scheduled executions in that state.
8
We pretend America is a great country, but we are not, we are a country where many Monsters live
23
These former slave states were never pro life.
24
Let's ask each one of the 25 male legislators who voted for this law to declare publicly, "I swear I have never asked a girlfriend, wife, or one-night-stand to abort my baby, or agreed to help with or pay for an abortion." Then let's see what happens.
14
They’d lie
3
The American slide began with removal of prayer in schools..
then the abortion political football came into play.. then the
1965 Civil Rights Act opened the doors to government expansion and subsidy of a voting block leaned heavily into poverty.. most recently gender confusion has been certified by
government.. in backlook what benefit what product have all of the aforementioned brought to the present sum America??
Perhaps the trend is in a reversal ...
1
@SMPH Sure - let's please reintroduce prayer in school. I'm sure you won't object if the prayer is a Muslim prayer to Allah, right?
5
So which prayer do you like? Catholic? Christian? Buddhist? Muslim? Which one????
5
Lesson from states that have restrictive gun legislation---like Chicago---there is always Indiana..and, so, the same will occur with restrictive birth legislation---
1
It would be nice if NYT had provided us with the telephone # of the Alabama state capitol and the governors # too.
Thousands of phone calls would tie up the phones for days.
I'm for it. How about you ?
13
@USMC1954 .... and it will accomplish what, exactly? Just sound and fury.
Eliminating abortion is is not only an attack on women’s rights but:
1) it will be as unenforceable as the old liquor prohibition laws of last century. Criminal elements (the Mafia) will profit from it. Abortion will go underground but will continue.
2) The size of Minority groups which anti-abortionists hope to reduce will contrarily grow enormously since they won’t afford the privileges of white women who will remain free to abort here or abroad.
3) The anti-abortionists are not acting for pure religious reasons but see it as a means to suppress women’s rights in the face of their growing strength.
In short the anti-abortion movement is not just a crime against women but is also impractical and meaningless.
History has proven for millennia that Abortion simply won’t go away!
190
Did you know that Prohibition was actually tremendously effective at its aims of reducing the misery of alcoholism in society, through plunging cirrhosis death rates and reducing alcohol consumption among other things?
Did you know Margaret Sanger and the abortion rights movement is historically intertwined with eugenicists and their racist desire for the extermination of the lower races through birth control and abortion?
Did you know that secular non-religiously affiliated folks are far less likely to be in an interracial marriage than Catholics in the United States - the backbone of the pro-life movement (whose religious commitments also include social welfare, ending gun violence and the death penalty, among other things)?
I encourage you to read the best arguments of your pro-life opponents and to study the history of the abortion rights movement before and after Roe. Look at a 3-D ultrasound and the apparent humanity of the child in the womb. I hope you change your mind. Killing is not the answer.
2
@Grandma
You say "the size of Minority groups which anti-abortionists hope to reduce will contrarily grow enormously since they won’t afford the privileges of white women who will remain free to abort here or abroad." I've never understood this particular argument. The pro-life people aren't trying to "reduce" the size of minority groups. They're trying to increase them through more births.
@James --- Totally none of your business to regulate a woman's vagina and uterus. I find it unbelievable that your bunch are the same folks that believe big-business should be allowed to self-regulate.
19
The ironic and dismaying correlation is that those most devoted to gun rights (killing) are also the most passionate about destroying the right to abortion in order to 'safe a life'. The same individuals profess to be ardently religious. Many would describe them as evangelicals although they are found lurking in many faiths. This is the root of their suppor for Trump. How to combat all this? Better get some good psychologists on board and get an answer before 2020.
5
maybe it's time for more women to run for state office in Alabama? Why are there are so many men in their legislature when 50% of the population must be female? This is not representative government. Whether it's abortion or some other issue, more diversity is needed. These men weren't born into their jobs - they ran for them and won, probably on low voter turnout. This shouldn't be ok to any woman - whether they are republican or democrat, pro-choice or anti-choice.
8
@Sarah - Kay Ivey is a woman and look at how well that's worked out.
2
Backwards legislation is always apparent when people don't want to face the problems before them. Global climate disaster is the problem. Not abortion. Yet we can't stay focused for longer than 5 seconds on climate disaster. Abortion is about power, not about saving some little human baby. The same people who are touting sacredness of life are the first to beat the war drums. America has lost its edge and is one backward country to live in. Many people will leave as will their business.
13
Let conservative states ban abortion. Let them become even more violent, poverty ridden, and toxic to major employers and educated workers.
Give them what they want good and hard and see how long it lasts.
Frankly, I agree with RBG that Roe v Wade was an overreach. If abortion had been left as a legislative matter to the states, to deal with on their own terms, with legislators accountable for the results of their legislation, I think the pro-choice side would have won a long time ago, quietly. But Roe v Wade gave the so called "pro-life" movement an easily visible goal to rail against and allowed them to pass laws as showboating without experiencing their consequences.
Let them make abortion illegal and deal with the consequences. Theocratic societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own oppression. Even the Irish have rejected the Church and legalized abortion, because they have first hand experience of the horror of religion wielding political power.
Give the "Red States" what they want and see how long they want it for. A stalemate that allows the far right to rot away on its own terms is frankly I think the only way we will ever resolve our culture war.
12
I have thought this as well. Once they “win” , then what?? We won’t have to listen to this argument any longer. What will be their rally cry?? This is their biggest rally cry and if achieved, what do you think might be next?
1
@A F I'm sorry, I am not ok with letting them live with the consequences when the health and lives of women are at stake. The lawmakers won't suffer, the wealthy won't suffer, the men won't suffer. The women will, particularly those that are the poorest. We know that from pre-Roe days, but it is a lesson those in power choose to ignore.
6
I’m assuming there’s a law heavily punishing (jail time?) those who get these females, who are not financially able to take a full time unpaid job for 20 years and/or suffering debilitating stress, pregnant?
7
We seem to have forgotten the women killed by illegal abortions prompting Roe v Wade so long ago. There were many and only gained traction when daughters, sisters and wives of the rich, famous or political were included in that growing list.
Indeed it was a crisis then and will be again if we continue along this path.
6
Parts of the US seem to be peeling off, falling away from the ideals towards which the nation was originally aimed. Progress is being turned back.
Unfortunately, the constitution says nothing about minimal educational standards, about the maintenance of rationality in public discourse. Both continue to suffer serious hits in this country we share.
Kindly note, I have absolutely nothing against any form of any religion, including christianity, until it insists it has the right to tell the rest of us how to live.
7
For the men who approve anti-abortion laws, I suggest an addition to their work. When a fetus is aborted, a DNA test must be done to determine the father. He is charged with the same charges as the mother - for not using a condom . In all the finger pointing at the mother, does anyone consider just How she got impregnated?
17
so odd, isnt it?
1
As soon as girls reach puberty, Alabamans should rush them into installing IUDs that are good for at least 12 years or until such time they learn to defend themselves karate martial arts and become strong and battle ready.
(Eye roll with sadness)
5
A woman in Alabama has to prove she fought back in order to get a rape conviction against her attacker.
Either we make laws that rule that some people are the means to the ends of others and not end in themselves or we make laws to protect equality and liberty. Abortion may be the thing being argued about, but what we are debating is whether a pregnant woman is an independent self or the means for others to use in whatever their goals are. Whether or not we are comfortable with the abortion decision or not, none of us, if we are true Americans, ought to be comfortable with the idea that a person cannot choose to not be the means to others' ends. That's what slavery is. A woman has the right to decide if she wishes to be a means to somebody else's ends. Taking that right away is murdering her.
9
One think I don’t understand is all of this respect for life- yet these same people impose the death penalty on often innocent or mentally challenged poor people, especially of color. How do these people reconcile this?
4
religious pretzelism
Pro choice people see their rights slipping through their fingers after 46 years of roe v Wade. Pro life folks see their side as having a new beginning which at times seemed futile and hopeless. Many women like myself take the pro life point of view because we were upset with the numbers of abortions that have occurred since abortion became legal. We wanted to see this catastrophe end and life given a chance. We had lost too many babies to this barbaric procedure and wanted this to stop.
It is the Republicans who were front and center of this revolution of life due to their signing new bills and putting into law stricter abortion bills. They are or be credited for saving lives and giving them the value they deserve. We can thank President Trump for appointing conservative Supreme Court justices who hopefully will help our cause. He is the first president who has taken pro life seriously and been on our side all the way.
This is a new dawn of a new day and we want to keep up the momentum of the rights for the unborn. We have seen tremendous gains but our fight is not over. We will continue along this path of protecting the innocent and will never give up. We have come a long way and will not sit on our laurels. Much work has to be done but our gains are very encouraging and we will not rest. We are ready for whatever we must do to save our babies lives. We will do it peacefully and lawfully though. Just like before.
2
What about the death penalty? How is this preserving the right to life at all costs? Why not fight this?
9
“Our babies”?! It isn’t your baby, sorry (on top of, embryos are not babies).
12
Since you do not believe that you have the right to make decisions for yourself as an adult human being, than by all means have male government workers make decisions for you.
But do not make a decision for any other woman. Shame on you.
11
To Govenor Ivey, every life matters and is a precious gift from God, except that of women and girls. There is no question these laws will negatively affect women's lives. If you want to effectively end abortion there are ways to do so that respect the lives of women and girls- sex education in schools, free and accessible birth control, and family planning clinics. Even advocating against porn and for a return to more wholesome values. These are proven to work and respect and don't punish women and girls. Abortion is a necessary safety net every civilized, evolved nation should have. Even if only one woman a year needs one, she should be able to easily have one. Abortion is a basic right and protection and something we need to keep legal.
18
I am a pro life woman. There are many pro life women like myself. We are not afraid to speak out against abortion and fight for the right to life. This is the most important human rights issue of our day. More and more people have seen the devastating results of the abortion movement and have been sickened by it. They want to stop this endless taking of innocent lives which are so precious in our eyes.
Millions upon millions have been killed and we want this to end. We have grown more impatient over the years over this killing and the reason for the steady growth of the pro life movement. We are strong and tenacious and young and old. We have made a slow steady difference but have picked up the pace. We are ready for our next battle wherever that may take us. Our end goal is to end abortion and we will win this fight. We are more determined then ever and have boundless energy. Here we come. Get ready for us.
1
why are those lives so precious when they're unborn but you dont care to speak out when born babies and children need health care?
18
@KMW
Show me one society that bans abortion that treats women and children well. Show me one society that bans abortion that is not also steeped in violence, superstition, and poverty.
I used to be "pro-life". I went to a conservative Catholic college. I drank that coolaid. I saw the lies, the manipulation, the way women were treated like dirt behind closed doors in the conservative Christian and Catholic communities.
Then I broke free. I married a decent man and became an ACTUAL MOTHER. I know how complex pregnancy is. I know what a solemn responsibility having an ACTUAL CHILD is.
I will fight for the right to choose and agains the lies and fraud of the so called "pro-life" movement until I die.
32
You will never end abortion. You will only end access to safe abortions for women who need them. While I am sure you believe you act from the moral high ground, I question the eventual consequences to women. And I certainly hope that your pro-life stance extends to those that are already born. It sometimes seems like it doesn’t.
14
What most people do not get is that the so-called abortion rights issue is not about abortion.
It is about freedom of conscious and the freedom to believe in whatever religion, philosophy or world view and live by it.
There are certain things in this universe that can only be defined by ones religion, philosophy or world view. It is precisely this reason why the American Society choose to emphasize the Freedom of Religion and to keep The Government out of it.
The people who want to define for me or anyone else when life starts is doing so in the face of that concept. They are denying me and anyone who has a religion, philosophy or world view that say life begins at a different time their right to their freedom of conscious.
If in the end the Supreme Court does not "get" what I have just stated above and strikes down the intrusion to other religion, philosophy or world then an argument can be made that the basic social contract has be broken.
A broken social contract means that individuals in the United States are then free to engage in any and all measures to secure the freedom religion, philosophy or world view to live by.
That means internal terrorism at the least and all out civil war at the most. Are the people want to pick when life begins for others ready to pay that price?
10
It's not about freedom of conscience and freedom of belief. It's about freedom period. And apparently women and girls are not entitled to that
3
To all the commenters criticizing the Republican’s anti-abortion actions, recall that HRC picked a pro-life running mate, and Pelosi recently endorsed a terrible pro-life Democrat incumbent over a progressive pro-choice challenger.
Still think the Dems are staunch defenders of a woman’s right to choose?
1
Democratic states are not banning abortion. Republicans are. You can still not want abortion to exist, but it does, and why not make a medical procedure safe? I’m a women’s health provider, and would not choose abortion for myself, but I totally support the option for my patients. An amazingly, few do go through it. Not once in 20 plus years have any of my patients chosen termination lightly.
4
Politicians and religious zealots must abstain from any kind involvement in women’s reproductive rights.
Good education and healthcare must be provided to all Americans , these basic rights would diminish the need for abortion as statistically demonstrated in all the other industrialized countries.
America lags behind in many social issues and Alabama’s recent abortion law is a blatant example.
5
Many pro-abortion posts take a sanctimonious position of civil rights and women’s rights about their own body in terminating a life. Ironically, the phrase “reproductive rights” is used in the context of ‘terminating reproduction.’
Pro-abortionists bring up rape and incest as though the other side somehow needs to capitulate by the utterance of these horrific crimes in the context of terminating a human life. Notwithstanding the fact that abortion for rape or incest is negligibly small in the total picture, why should the woman wake up with an advanced pregnancy months after the initial affliction and decide to abort a baby? Procedures are available to prevent conception immediately after rape or incest. So those arguments ring hollow.
What is seldom not discussed is the self-interest of the abortion industry including Planned Parenthood in preserving these human terminations for sustaining their businesses. Money is poured in from these businesses for lobbying for sustaining abortions worldwide. We need to carefully examine and expose how these organizations mobilize their resources, often government grant money in the case of Planned Parenthood, for lobbying.
1
@Appu Nair - Women don't just wake up and decide to have a late term abortion. These things occur when a much wanted pregnancy goes horribly wrong. Get a clue.
4
@DR
Yep. The last time I checked, the governor of Alabama who signed the bill into law is Kay Ivey. She definitely has a 'clue.'
The abortion industry will continue to have some rough rides this year.
1
@Appu Nair - What's your point? Kay Ivey cares about keeping herself in power. She doesn't care about health care, safety, education or anything else that's life affirming, not for the unborn and not for any of the residents of Alabama.
2
I see comments here from states on the coast, France, Canada, whose people seem to have a comment on everything having to do with United States, no one should really care unless they live in the state of Alabama and are directly affected by this.
Other than that, this is what the people in that state voted for and this is what they got, you don't have to agree with it.
1
@There - Wrong. Right wingers have inserted their religious beliefs into policy that impacts the way U.S. funds and interacts with other nations and they aim to insert their religious beliefs at the federal level.
5
How naive.
5
This issue had been settled based on viability of a fetus and safety for the woman. aka medical science! Once again we have the country's MINORITY using their personal religious beliefs as a means to dictate to the majority. Women are much more than the sum of their uterus. They are individuals with the absolute right to decide what contexts in which they'll share their bodies! Republicans have clearly been trying to reduce women by going back to the concept that women are vessels for reproduction purposes. There is a very simple solution: If you don't believe in abortion then by all means do not have one. But do not dictate or attempt to insert personal religious beliefs into the personal medical decisions of other women!
10
It is our duty as free Americans, when injustice and oppressive laws are imposed upon us, to actively, loudly, and stridently participate in non-violent, non-cooperation.
I will not be silent, and I will not be relegated to the status of an incubator.
10
All these bills are extreme. Instead of trying to resolve the issue, politicians and the media are continuing to divide the country.
The media reporting what politicians are doing is their job! Politicians trying to relitigate issues such as this are the dividers. They do it for votes to stay in power, not because they give a rat's tail about women or children...
2
I don’t think Bret Kavanaugh has the nerve to vote to overturn Roe. He knows Trump can’t harm him like he did Jeff Sessions or anyone else. And Roberts will be the adult in the room—again.
3
@Oliver - Are you sure Trump can't harm him?
Somebody paid off Kavanaugh's very substantial debt. They didn't do that out of the kindness of their heart.
Disclaimer: I personally would not have considered abortion if it had come to that. However, I believe that this is a highly personal decision between a woman, her doctor, her significant other and her God and not her legislators. These legislators are not pro-life (where is gun control?), they are pro-control – over women. These same hypocrites are the ones that promote less government involvement in people’s lives, but apparently only if they are men. I am not going to hold my breath waiting for the companion law that backdates child support to the moment of conception and locks the deadbeats up for 99 years for failure to pay.
8
Impossible to take seriously the anti-choice refrain that the sanctity of life is the driving force. It’s abour power and control over women, especially poor and marginalized women. It’s driven by the union of delusional evangelicalism and a callous republican political apparatus. The hypocrisy, the pure weakness and fear on display is a legacy of a defeated, humiliated slave-owning culture.
8
It’s ironic that a map of red states that are itching to impose restrictive abortion laws is almost identical to a map of states that have the death penalty. If they consider abortion murder, then why is it okay for a state to be a sanctioned adult killer? I would love to hear how they square this hypocrisy.
3
@Frau Greta - They're also pretty much identical to the maps of slave states and maps of voter suppression states.
3
"Now on Wednesday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed a bill effectively banning the procedure altogether."
Interesting to note that Alabama, the 5th state most dependent on federal funding, is prepared to finance a defense of this statute all the way to the Supreme Court.
7
Really. In this day and age, can’t we just split into 2 countries? We can call it north and south but it doesn’t have to be split by physical borders.
4
The states that implement abortion bans will join each other in a race to the bottom as progressives and businesses flee from them.
8
Of course if abortion is actually made illegal the GOP will lose half its platform.
m
7
The men finally have control of their uteruses, but where did all the women go?
2
The GOP war on women is an excellent strategy for 2020....for democrats.
5
@scott k. Agreed!
2
Women are not farm animals to be raped and harvested by their owners. If I were of child bearing age in Alabama or Georgia I would vote with my feet and leave. I encourage all women to abandon those states. Wish we could withhold all our tax money from them as well.
6
Can those of us on the coasts just secede, join our developed nation to the north and get this all over with? I don’t want to be in the same nation as these fundamentalists.
7
@Josh Wilson
We would love to have you, please start the process.
Others have commented on how this move by the despicables reminds them of the Taliban.
True, literally.
But they then say intelligent women in Alabama should move north. A few will. But there are not many of them. They are brainwashed in church 3 days a week from birth. They vote for Roy Moore. One of them signed the law, their Governor.
Also, they are lucky to have the right to move.
I feel much worse for the women of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I suggest they deserve a chance to escape their oppressive homes and be given a pathway to US citizenship.
None would move to Alabama!
7
“Every life is a sacred gift from God.” except for the 168 people we intend to murder via capital punishment. Governor Ivey - life continues after birth.
9
I have a daughter and nieces and might have grand daughters one day. Even Ireland that has realized they needed to catch up with 21st century, legalized abortions, now they watch in horror as America goes regressive backward and primitive.
8
Did anyone else notice that every picture of pro-life protestors had men exclusively in the forefront, while pro-choice protestors had women front-and-center? Perhaps the Times could try to be a little less obvious in their bias next time...
stay out of alabama.
boycott anything that comes from alabama or the big brand names that go into it. think coca-cola and such.
VOTE
3
Time to actively work toward getting more into office. Supermajority, launched by Cecile Richards (former head of Planned Parenthood), Ai-Jen Poo (Director of National Domestic Workers Alliance), and Alicia Garza (founder of Black Lives Matter) aims to do just that. Women, and men who love and respect women, should get active. The majority of Americans are pro-choice. The time is now. https://www.thenation.com/article/supermajority-cecile-richards-2020-presidential-election/
3
If you make abortion illegal....
There will be a police state around pregnant women.
There will be socialism to take care of unwanted kids.
Both bad.
Grow up anti abortion folks.
The only thing that works, as it has for all time:
Until the woman comes out to present a child to the world,
“It’s none of my business”
3
@Jane
Socialism isn't bad, it's the basis of a caring, responsible society.
1
Don't worry Gov. Kay Ivey, no one will come near you with a six foot stick. And, men decided the outcome? A carnival Act. Control women's bodies and decisions. Stop controlling woman. Will they take care of the woman who give birth following rape, incest. They will be a pariah given who is in-charge.
5
Just another reason why people are leaving Alabama.
7
So Alabama, one of the most impoverished states in the US, you are going to do what to protect these humans once they are born? I am waiting on your answers because you can barely take care of what you have, just wait, you will be bankrupt in 10 years time and asking for a bailout from the US government. Pathetic.
Notice how all who voted for the ban were WHITE MEN? I can't even....
6
Alabama Gov. Ivy cares for "every life," but 300 African Americans have been lynched in this state. Black lives don't seem to matter there. What a cruel, anti- feminist this governor is. All too often women abuse other women in all kinds of situations, and this is among the worst abuse. Alabama should win a national award for hypocrisy.
6
This bill reflects oppressive attitudes towards women; it also ignores the realities of life for unwanted children brought into a harsh world that is unwilling to provide for them.. What most men and women don't think about when pushing the idea of outlawing abortion is the bigger picture of childrearing in America. I get the idea that a fetus is a beginning of a life. However what will life be like for a child born under horrific circumstances such as rape and incest? What is 'precious life' like for children born to drug addicted parents, or parents who are abusive, or parents who are incapable of nurturing their children either emotionally or materially? I worked in child protection for many years and witnessed the results of unwanted, neglected and abused children being brought into a world in which their needs are ignored. I saw how women living in poverty, with addictions and their own serious problems unable to care for a child. The system is woefully inadequate to help these families and these children who are removed from the parents and placed in a foster care system that is under funded and unprepared for all the many thousands of children who are placed in it.
And BTW it's not just people in poverty who neglect and abuse their children. I would say to those who are pushing for 'rights of the unborn' they should be required to witness the hell that is life for unwanted, abused and neglected children. They should be required to work for their rights as well.
5
If The Dem's can't take this and run with it they should pack it in. I would suggest putting the subpoenas on the back burner because it is just making us look weak and mobilizing the majority population. Tell the Majority population, women, 1) Trump is not strong because daily he shows he is weak 2) Trump tax business losses show he is not a dealmaker but he is The Biggest Loser 3) Trump's stacked Supreme Court is in position to determine what you do with your body. The Right continuously throws red meat to The Left but no one on The Left seems able to exploit it. If you truly want to beat Trump you better throw The Marquis of Queensbury to the curb and put on the gloves and start swinging. No matter if your Pro-Life or Pro-Choice 25 men in Alabama shouldn't be able to invade a woman's womb. Does The Left need to know more than that Pat Robertson thinks this bill is foolish?
5
Women of means will always have the resources to travel for their abortions. This is part of the war on poor women.
8
Good to know that the Supreme Court, designed primarily to uphold the rights of white male property owners and slavers, has been bought for the new century and has pledged to oppress and rob American women of their right to privacy and financial futures. Thanks, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, corrupted corrupters! Nice to know that entire legislatures of the former slave states spend their citizens' tax dollars planning deft legal maneuvers to overturn Roe. Is Brown v. Board of Education next? Oh, wait. The public schools are already re-segregated and diced up into anybody's papa's charter schools. It will be hard to boycott so many benighted states, but I will try. Maybe all the great candidates running for president can also turn their attention to the legislatures and Senate, although it must be exhausting to live in such crocodile states of oppression. I am ashamed of Governor Kay Ivey, going along to get along, and all the other women proponents of anti-abortionism, anti-intellectualism, anti-professionalism, anti-privacy, anti-family, anti-women. You betray your daughters, your sons, and the future of this country.
3
Why do you keep calling this an anti-abortion law?
It is an anti-abortion for the poor law. Any woman with money could get a safe abortion in any state in the union even fifty years ago. That's a fact.
Why do the poorest states wage war on their poorest citizens?
In Alabama, "every life is precious," unless it is black, brown, gay, disabled, in prison, in school, or female.
8
It's time for Democrats to seize upon this issue and legislate an end to the attacks on women's bodily autonomy.
Elections have consequences.
Never again! Vote BLUE, people!
11
If they succeed in banning abortion, they'll immediately set to work banning contraception.
Eric Johnson, founder of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition, "“Why not go all the way?” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/abortion-law-alabama.html
Because, "all the way" means women who are effectively under house-arrest, who cannot go outside of their homes without a male relative as an escort, and who may not expose any part of their body to the public when they are out of the house. Christian extremists, left unchecked and unchallenged, will eventually get to where Muslim extremists have been for a long time. But it's not Christian or Muslim, it's just anti-woman extremism, it has nothing to do with religion.
7
Christ, His predecessors and his immediate successors said nothing about abortion. If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament in every church, synagogue and mosque. Let's wean our species and the world that's in our custody away from superstitious cults and into a model of reason and compassion for the living, not for wads of cells. Abort Superstition!
5
The Bible actually sanctions abortion in the book of Numbers (5:11-31)
1
A third-world State ( Alabama) ) in what is rapidly becoming a banana republic. What has happened to us? Oh, I know. The GOP.
5
What was Kennedy thinking, retiring under trump’s watch? Sigh...
7
My apologies to the NYTimes but the late great George Carlin summed this whole issue in the best way possible:
"Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers "
Just one of many on-target witticisms by a man I consider our Century's greatest prophet. all done in the guise of a comic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmMvsAjCkog
11
I do not recognize my Country. It is like a bad dream I want to wake up from.
8
This is an albatross for the Republican party nationally. Notice the almost total silence from Republicans in Washington! They have already lost a majority of the women's vote in the country and now they will lose a lot more. Most women are not going sit down quietly while a lot of fat old white men mainly in Southern legislatures attempt to turn the clock back to the 1950's. Watch Republican candidates in purple and blue states dodging and weaving when they are asked whether they support this legislation.
6
I suggest the governor take time to visit all the shelters across the country for beaten and battered children.
6
I wonder about what's in the fine print. The bill doesn't have exceptiosn for rape or incest. So what about situations where the life or health of the mother is an issue? Is there a paragraph buried somewhere that defines exactly what constitutues a dangerous or non-viable pregnancy. Who gets to decide whether a particular case meets this standard and is that discussion subject to further review? If a doctor performs surgery to remove an ectopic pregancy (the fertilized egg sets up camp in a fallopian tube -which is fatal), is that surgery automatically subject to criminal investigation?
What else is in there?
6
The legislators who are so eager to support the unborn child's right to life should also establish and equally support "Right to Establish Paternity and Support" legislation which would give an absolute right to subpoena DNA evidence from any and all potential fathers, and to establish a lien on any income and assets of the father to pay for medical expenses of birth and support until the child is an adult.
8
The states banning abortion are the same states refusing medicaid expansion - and the states that have refused medicaid expansion have seen a rise their infant mortality rate.
Apparently, the same Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi certainly don't mind it when an actual infant's life is endangered, BY THEM.
The only thing that surprises me about this Republican party is that they didn't put in a provision that requires all women to say, "Blessed be the fruit."
8
It's all about the power of the state over women's bodies, or more simply, the power of men over women. Some women refuse to be controlled, others are conditioned to controly and coopt power from acquiesing. Most women and some men prefer to have women make their own choices about their own bodies. But in this country the perceived right of control over women goes all the way back to early Christianity. I think control and power should be used with humanity and compassion. The exercise of raw power in this case is inhumane and backward.
5
How about making the gun laws pro life instead of pro death? That would make more sense to me. In a world where most,if not all of the climate changes come from overpopulation, it makes no sense to make conception a religious edict and a power struggle. Birth control should be easy and free. That would make far more sense in this struggling world. But humans are not practical creatures,they are often still bound and blinkered by ancient world views that were designed for a time long gone. Too bad we can't be clear- eyed about the time and place we in are now. We are burdened by old baggage and we painfully drag it with us.
6
Sanctity of life, eh? The legislators who use this argument appear not to see the contradiction in their approach to life and death. According to Governor Ivy, every life is "precious" and "a sacred gift from God". Every life.
Sure, until it isn't.
If one of these pregnancies results in a person who later goes on to commit murder, the State of Alabama will have no problem putting him or her on death row.
4
It's time we stopped fighting this fight. Elections have consequences, and people get the government they deserve. People in the states that are passing restrictive abortion laws voted for the Republican legislators, and those people knew that the GOP wants to restrict abortion. The laws these states are passing therefore reflects the will of the people. If the voters in those states don't like, maybe they should vote for the Democratic party in the next election; but of course we know that's not going to happen.
There is a fundamental differences in views between anti-abortionists and pro-abortionists - one is concerned about the rights of the unborn and the other is concerned about the rights of the woman. This fundamental differences is never going to be bridged. Better to let the states decide which way they want to go. People who don't like the laws in their states should just move.
All the energy that is being spent on this fight could be used to solve some of the more pressing needs of this nation - our debt, the crumbling infrastructure, climate change, etc.
3
This nastiness and hatred and distrust feels like what I've read about the decade(s) before the Civil War, and that did not end well. This is not just political; the values of red state residents are so different from blue I don't think this "union" can survive.
Time for secession, or at least some rational discussion about how to achieve a peaceful split before it gets dangerous.
4
These are the same people that supported Bush and the Iraqi War which should be called the Republican , Catholic, Christian Right war. They share responsibility for the murder and slaughter of our forces, the coalition forces and the Iraqi people. They are the people who claim to support life but were more than willing to sacrifice other peoples to over turn Roe vs Wade. When you add up the body count they are no different they just didn't get their hands dirty.
4
Prior to the American Revolution, abortion was permitted in some colonies and outlawed in other. This is why the Constitution is mute on abortion. Delegates to the Constitution Convention knew there would be no agreement on the issue, so the matter was left to the states.
The abortion issue is still unsettled despite Roe v. Wade because the Constitution is still mute on abortion.
To prevent abortion from overshadowing other issues in every national election, Congress should draft a constitutional amendment that reads: “A woman’s happiness being dependent on her freedom to decide to bear or not bear children, a woman’s right to terminate an abortion shall not be infringed.”
An alternant amendment might read: “A woman’s happiness being dependent on her freedom to decide to bear or not bear children, a woman’s right to terminate an abortion shall not be infringed until the third trimester of pregnancy.”
6
@William Case
I'm sure you meant "terminate a pregnancy."
An amendment may be what is required to ensure women's reproductive freedom, so I would include a provision for birth conrol, e.g "a woman's right to limit or terminate pregnancy shall not be infringed."
@Carol S
Yes. I did mean terminate a pregnancy.
I need a proofreader.
The language should be to prevent or terminate a pregnancy."
Thanks
1
The recently passed NYS law allows abortion at any time with only the vaguest of restrictions. This is now called "protecting" abortion?
2
@AACNY: That is blatantly NOT true. Later stage abortion applies only to non-viable or deceased fetuses and/or when the mother's life is in danger, per the judgment of medical experts.
6
Its because the people in those states can count at least to 10. They know they only need 5 votes from the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. And they know they now have those 5 votes. Those Supreme Court men voted to elect Bush. They will do it again with abortion. Simple.
One vote controls the entire country.
4
This is what the GOP has been doing. They align themselves with single issue voters; immigration, abortion, racism. They get the votes of these often poorly informed or misinformed voters, who are only focusing on their issue. The GOP, attaining power in the govt, then proceeds to enact their real agenda, which usually harms most voters and only helps the billionaires and corporations.
8
Not keeping abortion legal and safe for women to responsibly consider it prior to termination prior to heart beat is preposterous. What ever happened to the Alabama that elected democrat Keith Jones for senate to take up the senate seat of Jeff Sessions? The state legislature is extreme and cruel in banning abortion even under certain reasonable conditions. Right to vote should be exercised appropriately.
2
There will be states where women thrive and states where they are subordinated. Where do you want to live and raise your daughters? The choice states will be the ones that thrive. It is time to stop subsidizing taker states. Let them live on what they can tax their constituents. Let them run on their policies
11
This is an intrusion into government by secular sentiments. Abortion is as old as life itself. Modern women will not allow themselves to be held in bondage to an unwanted child. In the same breath, who will want a child to struggle in this uncertain world...perhaps the Republicans because they certainly have no moral fiber regarding the plight of children at the southern border, in the schools or by the poor. They have no regard for life in their pursuit of oil interests and the thousands killed in its pursuit.
7
I want a constitutional amendment giving me the right to control my own body.
12
@Angelica
I agree, however what you really need is a complete rewrite of your Constitution to bring it into modern times.
We're lucky in Canada, our Charter is from the late 20th century, so it's pretty up to date.
That said, every document of this type requires periodic updates, maybe every 50 years or so?
Both sides have taken this too far. If this was any country other than the USA we could have a real conversation about it. The real underlying issue that needs to be addressed is who has too many unwanted pregnancies and why. It’s not educated conservatives or progressives, it’s people below the poverty level. Why do they do it? It’s for welfare benefits or they’re on drugs and don’t care. In an era where we want to control population growth for pullution/climate change, our welfare systems encourage people to breed. It’s literally paying & incentivizing the poor for having kids. Our immigration laws encourage pregnant women to try and enter illegally to have a child on US soil.
Until these issues are addressed it won’t matter how available or free abortions are.
Do girls and women in Alabama have access to the "morning after pill"? How does the state view birth control pills and condoms? Will the state of Alabama also outlaw tubal ligation and vasectomies? How about ectopic pregnancies? Does the woman have to die due to a ruptured fallopian tube? What about the frozen embryos waiting to be implanted...if they are destroyed is this also murder?
Alabama has opened a Pandora's box.
7
Time to start the boycott of all companies headquartered in those states!
It worked for gay rights, time to use the wallet for woman’s rights.
Home Depot and Coca Cola are on the list, full list is circulating.
14
it's the 2020 reelection campaign for the legislature of gilead, starting right on time
7
Strange to me. In the entire animal kingdom, God gave the decision of what happens regarding birth is the mother's. God designed it. God allows his creation to figure out mothering on their own.
Why do men and their laws seem to think they should be overriding god's wisdom. . Mother's all across the animal world are smart enough to know what to do with their brood. Why would God go against his own rule for his crown of creation, humans?
Stop being cruel, follow god's example and leave mother's alone; in fact listen to them and help them.
The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.
7
No one will reconcile this issue, because it essentially comes down to a difference of opinion between those who see the woman's right's as more important, and those who see the unborn as human and having a right to life, particularly because the embryo, fetus is an innocent victim.
Interesting, because it's one example where the left are not taking the side of the most vulnerable, purely in the sense that the unborn have no choice. Yet our culture (and the left) increasingly advocates for sexual freedom, but use this as an after-the-fact solution to the serious, unintended consequences. It makes no sense. More access to birth control and family friendly laws and policies NEED to be implemented, but in the moment of decision, it's not usually government policies that women are considering.
Btw, I'm a woman, and have spent many years caring for women as they struggle with these choices.
1
Please stop referring to clinics that offer abortion as abortion clinics. These clinics offer a variety of medical services like cancer screening and contraception. It is more accurate to refer to them as women’s health clinics. Anti-abortion groups want people to think only abortion is offered with the hopes that the public would be more likely to support there closing.
36
The ethical questions about terminating pregnancy are complex and cannot be resolved with bumper-sticker religion or politics. As president Bill Clinton advocated policy that made sense: abortion should be legal but rare. Most legislators are not qualified to practice obstetrics and gynecology as well as pastoral counseling.
4
People are ignoring two facts: 1) that this is what the voters of these states want, this is what they voted for when they overwhelmingly voted republican in state senate races in 2018. No one in the states that restrict abortion can clim they didn't think their GOP rep would vote this way.
And 2) people don't realise that many states have already decided on abortion rights, regardless of Roe. Red states are slowly chipping away, while blue states are affirming free access. Overturning Roe is practically irrelevant because progressive states like California , NY and soon others will pass state level laws that protect women, while red states will just criminalise what they have already made totally inaccessible.
If women in red states decide overwhelmingly, as they have, that they should not have rights, then they need to grapple with the consequences of that.
3
@Paris
One of the reason we have a Bill of Rights is that it protects us from the dictatorship of the majority.
It matters not one iota that the "voters of these states want" this.
Certain rights are not subject to the whim of legislators - who appear more interested in their own views that actually representing their constituents.
They should remember that the are public servants, not the other way around. And voters should, as you rightfully point out, remember that when they go to the polls next.
1
This misses several key points.
1. If a woman in Alabama did not believe in abortion, no one forced her to do so. It was her choice and her right to act according to her views.
2. This law imposes the views of some religions on everyone, regardless of their religious/ moral views. Not everyone agrees with them - sometimes as a result of their own religious/ moral views.
3. The point of our a Bill of Rights is (in part) to make sure that the majority can not trample the rights of a minority.
4. This law completely and ignores Supreme Court precedent and clear guidance on abortion, which focuses on viability, not signs of “life”. It is another example of how the so-called “rule-of-law” is ignored when convenient.
3
What you stated here is the uncomfortable truth. These conservative states have overwhelming majorities of anti-abortion representatives.
The best way for liberals to deal with this is by ensuring the left and moderate states protect rights and ensure that one of the three political entities (House, Senate or Presidency) is in their control to prevent a nationwide ban from getting passed.
2
I guess I was holding onto the hope that Gov Ivey would veto this bill, but quickly she proved to be as backwards as the rest of the Alabama lawmakers.
Move over immigration/climate change/economy, abortion just became the issue that will decide 2020.
7
How did these people ever sink to such a low level as human brings and as Christians.
No money for education, nutrition programs, relieving poverty but plenty of support for depriving people of their rights...voting rights, right to controlling their bodies and their lives. I wonder if we will see a migration of intelligent and successful people away from these states?
6
A personal and/or medical decision should not governed by the state. Women and doctors should not be “criminalized”. Safe, legal abortion is a civil and human right concerning a woman ‘s body, her life and the possible life of a child that she will bear the responsibility for. Roe vs Wade must remain the law of the land. Right to choose is just that. No one is being forced to have an abortion under Roe vs Wade. You are free to choose. That must not change. What a giant step backwards for women’s rights . Note 25 white men voted to approve this law. What really makes me made is that a woman governor signed it.
9
If the ladies and gentlemen of Alabama choose to restrict the reproductive freedoms of low-class women, that is their business. If we demand the right to dictate to them our standards of morality, be prepared for Alabamians and others of their ilk to demand the right to dictate morality to us New Yorkers. Let the states go their own way, we have far more serious problems to address that to hyperventilate about how other people attempt to solve a complicated moral problem that has no good solution.
2
@Andrei Foldes: That would get rid of the "U" in "USA".
Sad truth. But truth nonetheless. Unlike the Jim Crow, civil rights movements where African Americans were denied the right to vote their situation; women in these red states have clearly chosen their position by either voting or by apathy.
Elections matter.
1
The abortion issue has been hijacked by extremists on both sides. We've got total abortion bans on one side and abortion-up-to-delivery laws on the other. Most Americans are moderate on the issue and don't want extreme laws in either direction.
You can't ban abortion; you can only ban safe abortion.
The rich old men who voted for this law will never hear the news that the women in their lives died of sepsis, though. Their privileged daughters and granddaughters will continue to have access to safe abortion in other states. Meanwhile, the working poor will bear the brunt of this cruel policy, as they always do.
20
The article states that some in New York are pursuing legislation that would extend abortion rights in the state past the 6 month (24 week) Roe versus Wade mark. Could you write an article about that? Will it be 6 1/2 months? seven months? also how do abortions work when a fetus is 6 1/2 or seven months old? I assume a traditional DNC is out of the question. For decades in China, under the only child rule, thousands of viable fetuses were left by the side of the road to die. I just saw an award winning documentary about it called One Child Nation. People did not think of the practice as unethical or immoral because it was government sanctioned.
1
@D’Ann George: From the article: "New York passed a law protecting abortion in later stages of pregnancy, and similar laws are now moving in Vermont and Rhode Island." These concern cases when the fetus is dead, or has a condition not compatible with life such as anencephaly, or when the mother's life is in danger.
3
D’ann, there have been many articles about recent states’ legislation to protect abortion. I have read them along with the actual New York State legislation, which I suggest you read too.
They codify roe v wade protections into state law and allow abortion when the fetus isn’t viable. I suggest you also read why this viability allowance was made and the wrenching real life stories some women have faced that led to it.
Abortion is a complicated, charged subject and can’t be distilled into headlines or simplistic solutions. Legislation to protect it isn’t pro abortion but rather pro choice. In reality, it’s often quite pro life, where smart policy and choice lead to fewer abortions... what is wrong with that?
1
As Sister Joan Chittister so eloquently stated, there is a difference between being pro-life and pro-birth.
4
I wonder if the court challenges are the best way to defend women's right to choice. It is what the right is banking on. Perhaps patience and working on the state level would be best in the long run.
Working to elect more women and more pro-choice representatives at the state level might do more than an ultimate showdown at the Supreme Court.
3
@Donna - Hasn't Emily's List been doing that for years?
1
Every single day I wake up in this country, I am so glad it is in New York. I am proud to live in a state that tries better than most to protect and help those who are least able to protect and help themselves.
50
Alabama's decision is one that makes a person say go ahead and secede from the Union. What has happened to this country?
28
Reagan let the far right Jerry Falwells of the world in vs. keeping the separation of church and State intact and there you go. We all now have these religious zealots in our lives! (Got to have those votes any way you can get them!)
2
Dear Alabama Gov Ivey,
I suspect your decision to sign the "Back to The Back Alley Act" might have been influenced by the recent US News Best State Rankings and your rival Louisiana.
Who wants to be the second worst state in the country, the 2019 ranking for Alabama, when you can be the worst?
"We're number 50! We're number 50!" come the taunting chants from Louisiana.
Laws like this will send both workers and employers running for the Alabama state borders, which might just get you that coveted number 50.
Roy Moore must be so proud of you!
65
Brett Kavanaugh brought his daughters and wife to his swearing in as a SCOTUS Justice. It will interesting to see if he would allow Alabama to force them to continue through term a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest (which, especially with children, is also rape).
26
@ROI
Or if one of his daughters has a miscarriage, while visiting Alabama. In that State, a Doctor might refuse to provide medical care to a woman experiencing early bleeding, for fear of a 99 year prison sentence.
What a backward State, Alabama. Neil Young had it right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QGMz9beIL0
"Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch".
This is exactly what I have been thinking. He has two daughters.how does he rule when his daughters say daddy don't take my abortion rights away. What does he think when he looks in the mirror.
2
The Alabama legislature is dominated by men 84% to 16% women. The total of 22 women only 7 are Republicans.
What do Alabama men really know about women's rights. Not much. Can't expect much from states that have low education scores. 'Bamans seem to be doomed to repeat their own smarmy history.
22
I hope NO ONE takes AL to supreme court. Let this one lie in wait when Dems take over and make supreme court 12 instead of 9.
8
Finally, some hope for the most innocent and helpless of human beings. Thank you Alabama.
4
I would argue that victims of rape and incest are the most innocent and helpless human beings of which this law does not protect.
11
@Rob Centros - What hope? That they be born into an impoverished state where women are treated like second class citizens, education is abysmal, health care is hard to come by?
2
I had to laugh at this statement "In Alabama, Governor Ivey signed the law saying it “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious, that every life is a sacred gift from God.” If so, how does this explain Alabama's treatment of inmates at it's correctional facilities that have been thoroughly condemned and reported on in NYT. The blindness to actual human suffering and hypocrisy is amazing.
73
I think of "pro-life" philosophy as "until it leaves the womb."
1
The fact that the governor mentioned God while signing this means religious zealots get to push their beliefs on everyone else. This is mind-boggling. Does constitution not guarantee the freedom FROM religion as well as freedom of religion? I am getting so tired of this. It is like we are moving back to the stone ages. Can Alabama please just secede, and take those other pro-Jesus states with it? If not, maybe they should provide salaries for child-bearing, reimburse all expenses for pregnant mothers, and then take those unwanted babies into state-run foster care. Add DNA-informed mandatory vasectomies for the biological fathers for even more fun all around.
41
Well, winter is definitely coming. Once abortion is stopped, do you think social conservatives will be satisfied? Next it will be LGBTQ and then after that, maybe non-Christians? Folks like this don’t stop until they’ve destroyed everyone else, and themselves.
42
@David Law. Can we just reverse the outcome of the Civil War already? Who wants anything to do with these barbarians?
1
Gov. Kay Ivey has pushed the state of Alabama back to prehistoric times. The barbaric lack of empathy or understanding is overwhelming. Has Gov. Ivey ever been pregnant? She is a monster of cruelty to the poorest women in her state. And she doesn't act like a pre-Trump American.
21
So women in Alabama are forced by the government to go through 9 months of pregnancy and delivery, both with significant health risks, if they accidentally get pregnant. But the government of Alabama makes no demands on the men who participated! They can impregnate as many women as they choose with no consequences. Outrageous!
46
I think that any pregnant woman should have the right to demand a man take a DNA test if she can reasonably state he may be the father. If the DNA test is conclusive, the man provides support (mandated by law). If he isn’t the father, the woman pays for the test (to prevent requests that harass men). There’s no reason the man should get off scot-free.
2
@Larry Feig,
Is the defeated confederacy women do as they're told.
1
Alabama bakers and cake "artists", get ready to bake some gay marriage wedding cakes; and AL nuns, get ready to pay for insurance that covers your employees' contraception, 'cause your government doesn't care what your "strongly-held religious beliefs" are.
What's that? You say AL lawmakers do care and would never force someone to violate, let alone gravely
violate, their religion especially if that person holds his or her beliefs strongly? Great, because my very strongly held religious belief requires me to end a pregnancy that places my life, limb, or soul (psyche) in danger. And it requires doctors of the same faith to do the same for their endangered patients. Put in other words, our strongly held and long-established religious beliefs prohibit us from leaving a pregnant girl or woman to suffer the psychological/soul-torture of carrying an unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape or incest to term. To us, it literally would be a sin to force that on a girl.
So, is it is not AL and the Supreme Court going to uphold the free practice of religion, or not? Are they going to force people to sin?
12
This is a bit like moving to a little country village, certain self righteous people snoop into other peoples’ affairs and try to impose their beliefs on them. If you grew up in such a village you may accept such an oppressive climate but, if you actually love freedom, you’ll move to the city.
This is evangelical theocracy.
18
The world over.
1
Alabama has a massively high number of gun deaths and the 2nd highest amount of gun violence in the country. Also loose gun laws. So, it has nothing to do with life and everything to do with power and misogyny.
39
Whatever we do, let's not just blame men for these appalling new abortion restrictions.
Kay Ivey is a woman and she signed ťhe Bama Bill.
My husband, an older white man who, sadly, flipped to the GOP a few years ago, was speachless when I told him of this development. He is pro-choice, but has gotten brainwashed by Fox News and now votes GOP due to 2nd Amendment concerns. (It's pretty tense in out house these days.)
"Don't worry," he said, trying to placate me and salve his conscience. "The courts will overturn these bills."
Sadly, that is NOT a given. But the right wing extremists have gone too far. Plenty of Trump voters had no desire to turn the US into Gilead, men included. We must bring some of them back in to the moderate fold. I believe it can be done. This law is an abomination. Men and and women of good will know this.
26
Here is the deal, California's taxes support poor States like Alabama. I don't want my tax money to support such laws that take women's rights away. I think if Alabama wants to receive any money from California they should repeal that law immediately or stop receiving our money. Period.
38
This is what the voters voted for, who are you to say, living in California, what they can and can't do, it's best to mind her own business in the situations, California has plenty of things to Alabama can complain about so just relax
@Lagrange,
California taxes support the entire defeated confederacy.
Funny how those hypocrites don't mind that kind of socialism.
6
California should make the support of Alabama by our taxes contingent upon reversing such laws that take women's rights away and are unconstitutional. I don't want my tax monies to support such barbaric laws.
19
ProLife Alabama, prove it and get rid of the death penalty.
ProLife stops short. Your legislation is not finished.
Why not ProLifelong?
What about paid maternity leave, paid parental leave the first two years of life, comprehensive health care and funding for quality pre-school, primary school, secondary school, and post secondary education?
Only the egg owner gets punished by the state of Alabama in this bill.
Does the sperm owner go unpunished? Why not 18 years minimum, for BOTH sides?
28
@BBB
Progressive pro-choicers should then refrain from opposing war because it kills. Anyone can make these arguments. Doesn't mean they're good ones.
When I was young (so much younger than today !) I really didn't understand how fundamentally different the male and female views of the world are. It took the picture of the exam/procedure chair accompanying this article to bring back memories of my own diverse reproductive experiences, and with those memories, the realization that those (the good, the bad and the ugly) are all experiences that no male will ever have direct knowledge of. Images of a chair such as this will not trigger the same memories in any genetic male.
For this reason alone, said males should stay out of female reproductive issues !
12
i want an amendment in the constitution that says women have full autonomy over their bodies.
30
@H
And I want one outlawing the DH. A much more pressing matter.
This is a prime example of state sponsored religion. Religious oppression of a group written into public law.
22
Assuming that everyone who voted for the law is a foster parent, organ donor, blood donor, and gun control advocate. Also anti death penalty. Because all lives.
9
Boycott companies that are doing business out of Alabama. Good example would be Hyundai which has a factory in the state. No corporation would want to be linked to this kind of repressive legislation.
19
@Roger Sprague - Has anyone compiled a list of companies yet?
Ok. Now... What legislation will be passed to provide for the children born to mothers not prepared to mother? What services will be offered teenage mothers whose parents refuse to support them or accept their children? What is the plan to provide emotional, financial and medical support to those who are experiencing trauma after rape that results in pregnancy? Pro-life must support the life in all its inconvenient truths.
15
@Jenna
Really good questions that NEED to be addressed. Also include in there less relentless cultural emphasis on sexual freedom/permissiveness, better sex ed that emphasizes consequences of STIs and pregnancy (better sex ed), more accessible birth control. I'm a woman who supports both men and women, values sex as good and healthy, but you can't have a culture that advocates sexual freedom/permissiveness but doesn't address the consequences
It is past the time for still more talk and discussion- which would appear to be a given as most every articles notes the sheer polarization of sides on the issue. Time for action. For comparison, note how when Arkansas toyed with "religious freedom- anti-gay" legislation, the business community stepped in to squash it. Money talks. I propose that the big stick for the pro choice side take a form aimed directly at Georgia: Boycott Delta Airlines, and, of Course, ALL Coca Cola products. Big campaign. Pro Choice? "I choose NOT to drink Coke products and to NOT fly Delta."
10
This law is based on religious belief that human life begins at conception. For the protection of all, this law should be overturned on the basis of separation of church and state.
17
Dear Governor Ivy,
I am so glad to hear about the precious lives you will be saving by signing your State’s breathtaking overturn of Roe vs. Wade. So even though you will be reversing decades of progress in the area of women’s reproductive health, ruining the lives and careers of potentially thousands of doctors who will continue to support a woman’s right to choose, and dooming countless women to lives and careers derailed by unwanted, sometimes risky pregnancies, at least there will be State support for all of those babies. It's so great to have you on record in support of the babies that result from this signed legislation, and such a relief to know that you have set aside the adequate and appropriate funds ( I mean, you have, haven't you??) so that you can jump in to help out with the large percentage of them whose overburdened families will not be able adequately to provide for them. Congratulations.
23
NYT, please publish a list of states taking away reproductive rights for women. We all still have the choice of where to spend our money, whether corporate or personal dollars, and my choice is to not spend any money in these states - personal or corporate. Thank you.
21
@KB - Use the NYT search feature. They've already published that list.
2
How is freedom of religion upheld if the law has been passed because “every human life is sacred to God”? Legislators may not agree with their atheist, agnostic and non-Christian citizens (and even a good many Christians who take a different view of when a foetus becomes a child), but they are obliged not to impose their religious positions on them.
20
As seems to be the fashion in American politics, the pendulum swings first one way at the insistence of one fringe and then the other when the opposite fringe gains power as a result of overreach by the first. Those who abuse their power when in power should not be surprised when they are abused, in turn.
Perhaps Americans need to consider the spirit of independence that made this country great.
2
@Least Harm; I venture a guess that the pro choice side is not a fringe! It's rather the majority. As it so happens the minority is pushing their agenda on the rest of us. Either that'll have to stop or by definition it won't be a democracy anymore.
Dr. John, you are just arguing. not giving substantive arguments to 'liberals and socialists'. 'simple, liberals should just pay to take them across state lines' . contrasted with abortion being morally base because it will produce more poor children. pregnancy is not without risk. young healthy pregnant women have died suddenly on the streets of Seattle due to massive pulmonary emboli. I do not know what kind, or if, Dr represents. could be dentist or PhD or nothing. the risk of dying in pregnancy is not zero. of the two people involved in a pregnancy, only one bears the risks. that person has the right to determine her medical care. if those who were against abortion provided adequate medical care throughout life, adequate financial support, educational support, social safety nets for the entire lifespan, some women would likely make a different decision. but the support is not legislated after birth. and the medical risk decision is made by predominantly white men who do not face risk. armchair quarterbacks. women, with the support of their families or confidantes, with their medical providers should make the personal decision most appropriate for her. these decisions are not made lightly. And I fully support men who are against abortions in any form using the most effective form of contraception or remaining abstinent so that they do not contribute to the issue.
5
The moral and religious questions are interesting philosophical conundrums, for sure... but I hope that the Economics faculties in each of these states and Steven D Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) are about to commence a long-term study into the actual social and economic impacts of these decisions.
2
This XX chromosome individual named Kay Ivey—
Should indeed be ashamed of herself.
A physician MD
43
Alabama is one of the least educated and very poorest states in the nation. It is not a coincidence that they are also one of the most right wing states in the nation.
A bunch of old white men telling women what they can and can not do is not surprising in this state.
There is a link between lack of education, poverty and conservatism that can not be overlooked, This is true in the USA, as well as many other countries. Old conservative men tell women what to do in poor rural areas all over the world.
79
@S B
Yes, I call it testosterone poisoning.
A physician MD
11
@S B
Yet it is disproportionately the children of black women who are aborted, which is an issue those on the left don't address
2
Providing reproductive services like birth control decreases the number of abortions. There will always be women seeking to end a pregnancy. This just takes away the safe option.
4
Once again, I am appalled at things republican legislators have done to this country. Those women who demonstrated outside the Alabama legislature should have stormed the doors, paraded in the corridors and refused to leave until something is done to reverse this horrible decision. How could a female governor side with all those old white guys who have voted to take away women's rights? I find this whole thing disgusting and backward.
37
@Gayle F
Women's rights? What about the rights of the unborn?
4
@greenie Will you adopt these children? If you are going to be pro life, let me see you take on a dozen raise, feed and educate them and give them love. I mean really. Going to talk the talk, show some action.so far I haven’t seen any.
2
These anti abortion zealots don't care about the fetuses, their so called "unborn children". All they care about is their own conscience, actually ego, so that they can strut around acting holier than thou. If they were the least bit honest with themselves and everyone one else they would take complete responsibility for the child that is born to a women that did not want it.
21
@Chrisvk: I don’t think it’s even ego — they are concerned only about their own “immortal soul.” Who cares about suffering, or the ire of others, when you’ve been told you’ll burn in eternal hellfire if you don’t stop abortion?
3
According to statistic.com, Alabama has the 5th highest rape rate in the U.S. It's also near the bottom for funding healthcare and for supporting day care for working mothers. But make the women have the babies. There are more women than men in Alabama. If they don't choose to vote the men who support this law out of office, then the rest of us should mind our business and let them have what they've asked for. Why help people who don't want the help?
21
@KL
We need to help those to stupid to know the difference.
AlaBama is ranked one of the lowest in education in the whole country.
And this country isn’t very smart to begin with.
28
You ever hear of voter suppression???
3
@Sigmond C. Monster
Yet California votes for woman’s, gays and civil rights MORE often than not.
There are enough educated and informed voters who get to vote with their voice despite republican voter suppression tactics.
2
Governor Kay Ivey must want to be re-elected to another term in office. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Supreme Court refuses to revisit Roe vs. Wade if this law ever gets that high up. It's obviously a lunatic piece of work by the hysterical Far Right.
10
Reckon I'll steer clear of Bami.
17
Is Alabama going to order men and sexually active boys to begin child support payments retroactive to
conception? Allow tax deductions and earned income credit effective retroactively to conception?
Is Alabama going to incarcerate anyone who harms or distresses a pregnant woman and thus contributes to or cause her to miscarriage -- like acting-out boyfriends, husbands, fathers, brothers, etc?
Time (past time) for AL mandatory life sentences without parole for rapists and other male sexual assaulters who impregnate a girl or woman. And seizure and transfer of all of his assets to her.
52
@JUSTICE
How about mandatory vasectomies at puberty? It is safe, cheap, same day recovery, and reversible. You can pay to undo it once you can afford a child, and 0 chance of conception. Therefore, no 'fetal lives' will ever be in danger and no 'sperm lives' wasted on the ground.
If life 'begins at conception' it would be the most effective, perhaps only solution.
15
Hear, hear!
Totally agree.
1
I guess that Alabama’s citizens need to subjugate someone or they feel inferior. First, it was the black slaves and since this is now taboo they are enslaving their women instead. What they need is a daily wake-up call like “Marching with Sherman through Georgia”. Either respect others’ rights or keep looking over your shoulders because the ghost of Sherman may feel that there is unfinished business in Alabama.
12
The legislators in Alabama are trying to prevent legal abortion. . They cannot prevent it, they simply want to drive desperate women back to the care of butchers.
12
In the tradition of Lysistrata, physicians in Alabama should withhold medical treatment for all white males over the age of 30.
This could continue not only until the repeal of the unconstitutional abortion ban law, but until Alabama ranks in the top twenty five percent of states for funding of public education.
17
If ever there were a time to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it is NOW!
24
Alabama has taken a bold step and all those who are outraged by Alabama's law denying women reproductive rights should respond with bold action of their own.
1. People should organize to persuade their city or town councils, county governments, local school boards, and mayors to introduce and enact legislation prohibiting their towns/cities, school districts, and county governments from doing business with the state of Alabama or with any town, city, county, or business within the state of Alabama.
2. People should organize to persuade television and radio stations in their markets to refuse to accept advertising marketing the state of Alabama or any business or venue of any sort within that state (resort, entertainment, hotel, dining facility, river or gulf cruise, etc.).
13
The Deep South never changes!
16
What will a victim of incest or rape have to do to prove her case for abortion in Alabama? A 13 year-old girl who was raped by an uncle or cousin won't have the know-how or fortitude to get past the road blocks that will be established. I guess that's the point.
If anti-abortion people believe that all life is sacred from conception, how do they justify making exceptions for abortion in instances of rape or incest? This is extremely cynical on their part. Is it because they could only get support for this bill with those exemptions?
9
She will have to do nothing -- because the Alabama law just signed makes terminating a pregnancy at any stage a crime EVEN IN CASES OF RAPE/incest
12
I wish we lived in a world where women were not faced with having to choose whether they should keep their unborn children or not. But women - and girls - have to make those choices every day. And I do not understand how preserving the life of an unborn foetus is more important than ensuring that a living breathing human being should not have her life devastated and traumatised by having to continue a pregnancy begun from rape or incest (at the most extreme). When is it that the unborn child became more important than its mother?
8
@Linda
A victim of rape can obtain the "morning after pill". This should prevent any pregnancy from occurring. I don't have a solution for incest except perhaps if the men who would engage in this practice realized there wouldn't be an abortion alternative they might think twice. And prosecute men who do victimize their daughters, granddaughters etc to the utmost.
2
This legislation will cause a lot of people who strongly disagree with it to move to other states, or not to take a job in Alabama. I imagine that this will bring Alabama even closer to the bottom of the scale in income per capita.
18
So if I am understanding this correctly, a rapist in Alabama would get a lighter prison sentence than a physician that performs an abortion?
71
Yep. And a domestic violence perp gets even less. Even if he causes a miscarriage.
39
@Bill
Read the bill. No.
1
@AACNY: Wrong. A doctor performing an abortion under this law will be imprisoned for up to 99 years, but in many cases the rapist goes free. Nice try, though, AACNY.
6
Wow, just plain wow. We’ve turned back the clock to 1959. Why is abortion even still an issue? Let women choose the right to do what they will with their own bodies. Keep government out of it!
31
@MN Retiree
It's worse than that, we're not going back to the past because advanced medical care is being criminalized. And now, unlike the past, we may imprison women for having miscarriages.
5
It is an issue because Karl Rove chose to introduce social issues to drive a wedge/ divide people along social,issues just for votes....
3
This CAN NOW be a platform the democrats can run and win with for 2020.
There are far more registered woman voters, and far more registered democrats than republicans.
We need to make sure that their votes are made and counted in numbers greater than what happened in 2018.
We need to win the electoral college votes.
We need to vote in large enough numbers to compensate for the republican gerrymandering, voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement.
DEAT FASCISM VOTE
18
If this were about "life," it wouldn't be happening. Abortion laws don't stop abortions -- they just stop safe abortions. The more restrictive the abortion laws, the more women resort to unsafe, "back alley" abortions -- from which many women die. This was a problem in the US before Roe v. Wade, and it's continued to be one in nations where abortion is illegal. It's been studied for decades, but here's a link from a dozen years ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html
30
I’ve seen crisis pregnancies result from failed contraception, youthful bad judgment, not so youthful poor judgment, accidents, bad luck, coercion, crime, being fooled by deceiving or abusive men, falling for the wrong man who walked away. Then there’s pregnancies gone wrong, with fetal abnormalities or catastrophe.
I’m sure most of us of a certain age have seen or even perhaps experienced all of these predicaments. What I can’t understand is how these anti-abortion zealots haven’t seen such situations as well, and understood from observing life that sometimes ending a pregnancy that never should have happened is the best option. And that these are complicated, personal situations that can only be decided by the woman affected.
I know anyone who would force an incest victim to bear a child has no compassion or even basic human sensibility. But to do it to try to force the Supreme Court to adopt your ideology, that’s sick stuff. Who are these people and how did they become monsters?
52
... and why do they get to rule over the rest of us?!
27
We need a law if a women can identify the father with a DNA test the next 18 years of work the father owes the women child support regardless of the child's age.
15
And he has to pay for all legal, medical, psychological, and educational needs of both the woman and the child. Or the state should pay. And that includes college.
11
Isn’t that already a law??
1
@Justice
Not all children are born healthy or able to grow up and go to college. Without the option of abortions in cases of high risk births, there will be a higher percentage of children born who will need to be supported for the rest of their lives.
Every man should remember this every time he has sex. He might, if he knew he’d actually be held responsible for a special needs child.
6
No child deserves to die. Ever. Why do abortion supporters not get this? Maybe the states are starting to accept the facts of what happens when a woman is pregnant: another human begins to exist. We need to support the rights of unborn children and not only give them rights when they are wanted.
That said, we need to vastly increase our support of women by expanding maternity leave and providing universal healthcare like most civilized countries do. Republicans are holding a double standard with their healthcare idiocy and pathetic stance on gun control.
I despise Trump, but I also despise a culture that treats the unborn children as disposable unless they were planned and wanted.
(And no, I’m not just a Catholic.)
2
Why do you insist on imposing your beliefs on others? No one is forcing you to get an abortion.
35
Is a zygote a human being? Is a sperm cell?
25
Because a bunch of cells that cannot survive outside of a living woman's uterus is NOT a child.
61
Kay Ivey, how does it feel to be the new George Wallace, standing in the way of freedom? Get ready for the boycotts, ma’am. I’ll be paying attention to where my next car is made.
“Pro life?” you say? Not when you support a president* who is actively working to strip away health insurance from millions of Americans. Obamacare is doing more to protect life than you and the Alabama legislature could ever dream of.
30
why are MEN---on ANY LEVEL--- making decisions on what happens to WOMEN'S bodies....
21
@arturo
Time for men and women who are sick of these actions to VOTE THEM OUT.
4
The woman is a saint,Governor Ivey will spare women a lot of heartbreak and a lifetime of regret.
2
thanks for mansplaining.
39
I hope and trust you have now made a donation to an organization that supports feeding, educating and providing medical care to the children who will result from this law. Being that you care so much for life and all.
6
@rick baldwin
Governor Ivey is the opposite of a saint. These words are almost more shocking than her actions. She is imposing a lifetime of struggle for all of the women (and non-binary folks who can get pregnant) who no longer have the right to choose.
Actual Heartbreak:
Heartbreak is not being able to make your own choices about your body and your future.
Heartbreak is seeing your dreams crumble in front of you because you have to dedicate the next 18 or more years of your life to putting another person first, instead of bettering yourself.
Heartbreak is being forced to carry a child from rape, incest or abuse.
Heartbreak is a family losing a mother, sister, daughter, aunt during a complicated pregnancy and dangerous childbirth that could have been prevented through a safe abortion.
You know nothing, Rick Baldwin.
12
I realize it would be difficult for sensible women and doctors to leave these crazy states but it’s time for them to begin an exodus. And for all sensible people to boycott these states in all ways possible. What I wish is that there could be a separate red nation created where they could self destruct in record time. As soon as they had their “Christian” theocratic dictatorship the different factions would fight over whose denomination should rule. No smart people would be running businesses or in their governments. It’d be sort of fun to watch. Meanwhile I seriously doubt the Supreme Court will uphold this stupid and cruel law.
10
@Christy Marcotte Brooks
I agree with you to a certain extent. It would be great to see conservatives self-destruct but the tragedy is that many of the folks affected by this do not have the means to leave their homes. This is an attack on low-income, populations of color and those of us who live elsewhere need to find more concrete ways to help and support those affected.
3
@Meg
Yes I thought the updated idea of freedom riders mentioned earlier might help. But I’m not sure what we can do to help them politically except maybe boycotts
But other women do have abortions not just the poor. I know MANY.
Clearly she is too old to need one, so it's purely political.
10
Her fate is sealed with her signature.
3
So ... a teenager is forced to carry to term a child borne of incest.
Will Governor Ivey provide a safe haven for the mother and child so they will not have to continue to live in a home where the daughter is violated sexually by her own family members?
Will Governor Ivey fund programs for the mental trauma that will undoubtedly afflict the mother who is forced to carry this baby to term?
If the mother finds caring for the child impossible, will Governor Ivey ensure that the child finds a safe loving home?
Let me guess what the answers are. It's so strange how the biggest proponents of these laws never seem to care what happens after the child is born.
9
@Ivy
And what if the child, as is well documented in babies conceived by close relatives, is born with serious defects ? Who is going to deal with that ? What this 'law' will do is force such young women to seriously consider suicide.
11
my sister was a fourteen year old victim of incest - what monsters are these people to force full term pregnancy on a child's body - to me that is a crime!
40
Alabama, dead last in every social metric, says no to individual liberty when it comes to abortion but yes when it comes to guns.
My only question is, what are you people so afraid of?
18
Governor Kay Ivey is betraying all of the women in her state. Truly wretched backstabbing of her sisters.
14
We are looking at a state that used their bible and white Jesus to justify slavery. When forced by a decent nations to abandon slavery they used that same Jesus and Bible to justify Segregation. 200+ years of using Jesus and the Bible to hurt people ALABAMA. Weirdly they are proud.
13
How did Fascism come to America? Slowly, then fast!
13
I hope all the morons that voted for Jill Stein in 2016 because "there's no difference between Trump and Hillary" see what they've sown. Stein is pro choice and look what this (allegedly) pro life president has done with his Supreme Court picks.
9
@pmiddy
For those of us who live in reliably Red (or Blue for that matter) states, which is probably the great majority of Jill Stein voters, that was a Perfectly Safe Protest Vote.
Please quit haranguing us, we are not responsible for the outcome (although some of us were aware of What (was going to) Happen(ed), which is why we were strong Bernie supporters . . .
3
Thank you.....the last photo saw of Stein had her dining with Flynn and Putin in Moscow at an RT celebration. She siphoned off 30,000 votes in Wisconsin alone. Where is she now??
Also, the Bernie Bros are still out there.
6
@irene: Brexit also happened because of “protest votes.” The 2016 Democratic platform was the most progressive in decades. I’m sorry it didn’t include everything you wanted, but next time, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
3
She is a traitor to all women everywhere
7
It's no surprise that Alabama and other southern states are passing legislation to make abortions criminal. They still live in the 1800's when whites were slave owners.
6
it's a sound decision by the sage politicians to save life of a newcomer to see the world of American society and politics widely famous all over the world.
Great, while we were busy fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan they opened a branch office in Alabama.
62
The only person I want to hear about pro-life issues is a Buddhist.
The next nine months should be a very interesting development in Alabama.
3
@Teresa
I’m Buddhist.
But I’m pro choice. Compassion for cells in a womb does not override compassion (and respect) for the woman who is pregnant. It’s her decision, not mine.
6
I'd prefer to hear from a Jain.
@Chickpea
Well I am certain that someone could have a rational and sane conversation about the value of life with you, then.
A fetus cannot live at 6 weeks outside the uterus so is that pro-life? I am in my 40s and shocked, angry, sad, confused and disappointed we are still fighting for a woman's right to choose what is best for her body and life.
It is an obsession with some people. Why don't they shift their obsession onto affordable healthcare for all, quality public schools, affordable child care, mandatory maternity and family leave, maternity leave longer than 6 months, war on sugar and processed food, equal pay for women, affordable housing, ....
The first step is probably for people to get to know one another. I don't care if you are "pro-life" I just don't want you telling me what to do, like I would never tell you what to do.
20
Considering these people's stance on guns, they are not so much "pro life" as they are "anti choice". They are self righteous and want to impose their beliefs onto others.
14
@Lagrange anti choice people are, also, probably climate change deniers. A woman's choice denied in the USA has a ripple effect close to home and around the world. Our planet is not only in peril due to climate we are in peril because of lack of resources due to too many people.
That thought might be opening a can of worms. But I trust women and especially electing an abortion at 6 weeks you are not a horrible person. Like I said obviously a fetus won't survive outside the womb for months not weeks. It takes a brave and selfless person (men and women) to decide what is best for them.
1
“All life is precious” yet Alabama has the death penalty. Such hypocrisy!!
22
For sure, following this sad, inane action, no one should declare herself/herself Alabamy bound.
4
Dear Governor Ivey, Seems like you just threw your hat in with the misogynistic beasts that make it seem like you represent a minority, raising their own status by using you. But they never had your backside, let alone the female constituents you claim to (mis)represent. You've probably been dedicated to the script since you were knee-high to the gun-toting, segregation-loving state you were birthed into, and forever live and lie for. You probably prefer conservative white men to rule your conscience, and your body too, because you've never known or questioned anything beyond that staid and antiquated familiar formula. But you're older now, and should know your own mind. You're also beyond the risk of what you've denied your fellow females. Why be like the menfolk denying women's rights over their own bodies at this point? You should be questioning, using the law to ours and your advantage. You've lived a full life with enormous potential, for our gender especially. And as a politician, you must be aware of the wider world beyond your state borders. Or is being popular and safe for re-election in your little pocket what it's all about, just like supporting gun rights? And at our gender's expense? I know you'll never see this or read this, because you most likely never do anything out of your safety zone. But I still have faith that there are some readers, as well as informed voters in Alabama. We may still prevail, as will the truth.
5
There must be a better way to resist than promising not to visit a state few if any people would ever consider visiting anyhow. Maybe ongoing contributions to a publicized fund to help thousands of young women leave and get established elsewhere. "Its Better in the 21st Century: We'll Help You Get There"
11
So many good points. My question is why are politicians worried about abortion legislation when there are gun shootings in our schools every week. Am I missing something? We can’t be bothered somehow to impose laws that would protect the children that are alive and well. Rather impose laws on the fate of the health of a woman and her fetus. This is beyond troubling.
20
No see, you protect them up until they are born, then you hand them a gun in the delivery room (it's their God-given right!!) so they can protect themselves going forward.
6
An excellent question indeed!
4
@FD MD
I think it's more about the fact that until the fetus is born it is solely a burden on the woman - emotional, biological, financial.
Once the baby is in the world it starts costing these hypocrites money.
If we had pregnancy stipends that cost them even a penny for fetuses they wouldn't be 'pro life' anymore.
3
I certainly don't have a clue how this will play out, But what I'm hoping for is that Fed district Ct judge issues a stay. Then it will be appealed to the Fed Appeals court, who agrees with the lower court. And then I hope the Supreme Court will refuse to take the case.
5
Abortion should be outlawed only when the world is perfect and right now this world is so far from perfect. I don't recognize my country anymore or the rest of the world. The cancer that is taking over this country seems incurable.
10
Abortion is a horrible thing but it has to be a woman's right to own her body; we are not baby making machines for another person's needs, spiritual or otherwise. It's a form of slavery.
I would be more sympathetic to religious persons who believe life begins at conception if it included readily available birth control. Full funding for planned parenthood, they do the more than any organization to lower abortions by offering alternatives to unwanted pregnancies. These repressive laws are made by man because if a man can't force a woman to keep his child then he can't force her to do anything.
14
@Kathy
It's made for loser rejects that can't find a woman to willing bear their children. Beta males seeking to override the natural perogative of the female to choose her mate.
They hate natural selection and evolution because to them it is more than a theory.
3
Message to younger generations
Hey, if you are under 30, this is YOUR future the gop is trying to destroy. You are not living comfortably in your parents's house anymore. Your country is trying to enslave you.
Get out on the streets and make your generations heard, the way your parents and grand parents made theirs heard.
Your futures are on the chopping block with the loss of our democracy.
20
How can a governor knowingly sign a law that violates the constitution and the Alabama oath of office?
16
An underdog candidate in the Republican primary, Mr. Kemp rocketed to victory with hard-right messaging that included a promise to personally '''''''''round up illegal immigrants in his truck, and, significantly, to sign a heartbeat bill outlawing abortions''''''' after six weeks.
What do you do with immigrants? So now american women can get pregnant
1
Since Alabama is forcing pregnant women and girls to bear children, it’s only fair for the men and boys involved to pay mandatory support (for prenatal care, etc.) starting at 6 weeks.
29
Simple.
Liberals should provide the resources and funds necessary to transport women desiring an abortion to an adjoining state.
4
@Dr. John
It must torture you to live in such a progressive city, Doc. You may want to consider moving down south. It sounds like you may be happy there.
18
@Dr. John
GOOPs should be taxed to support disabled children and their support personnel, as well as children who cannot or will not be nurtured by their parents.
10
@Ken Quinney
I’m very happy up here torturing the weak thinking of local elites and socialists.
Great! Priests love this as it creates a larger pool of kids to molest.
16
@Steve
That is absurd.
@Dr. John No, it isn't. Unwanted children are more likely to be victims of abuse by their own parents, to be rejected by their parents, and to be perfect fodder for others to abuse. Priests who have targeted children always pick those who are lonely or not cared for. And if the priests and Boy Scout leaders don't get them, or even if they do - the prison and military industries await.
17
So if the Alabama law actually does go into effect, when will we start seeing laws that require police officers, firefighters, or even just ordinary citizens be required —under penalty of a life sentence — to go to the aid of anyone in danger regardless of whether or not there is a high probability of rescuing the person in danger, and regardless of whether the rescuer’s life would be in certain danger as well? The way I interpret the Alabama law is that a woman and her doctor would be required to completely disregard her life (should hers be in danger) and place the life of the fetus above her own even if the fetus has no chance (or little chance) of surviving medically (because of some horrible disease, genetic defect that will not allow the child to survive even it did survive the birth process, etc.). I know of no other laws in our country that require someone to give up their life under penalty of life imprisonment in order to save another life. Of course, people do willingly put their lives on the line to save someone else - but there is no law that requires them to do so under penalty of imprisonment. Such heroics are decided by the person making the sacrifice without coercion by the state. That is just one consideration. I believe medical decisions should be made by a patient in consultation with a doctor. There are medical practice guidelines and hospital ethics panels that can assist in the decision-making. Government should stay out.
19
@Debra Vogler
Twisted logic.
1
The US Supreme Court in Roe v Wade said it best: The right of privacy encompasses a woman's right to choose abortion. While that right is not unlimited, as the court noted, states like Alabama, are attempting to impinge upon that fundamental right in ways that are simply unacceptable. Let's hope that the conservative packed justices do not forget this concept. Ten years ago I wouldn't be concerned. But now? Let's pray Justice Ginsburg does not retire.
8
What a sad, sorry state of regress has the country entered since 2016. How are we going to snap back from so much damage? I'm utterly horrified by the devolution so much of the country has slipped into.
12
Kemp did not rocket to victory in Georgia. He slithered in on voter suppression.
21
Btw, Boycott Missiippi!!!
4
@J. We should just give the whole lot of 'em (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi) back to the Confederacy. Good luck surviving without all of those federal tax dollars siphoned off the non-theocratic states.
1
Are the legislators in all these states that are taking away the right of women to have control of their own bodies also going to ban their state’s use of the death penalty?
9
If you are a woman (or man) who values a woman’s right to choose, there are plenty of other states in the country that will welcome you. Honestly, just leave. They cannot hold you, they cannot make laws you don’t want to live under.
6
Many women do not have the means to travel out of state. It’s pitiful that they are being held hostage where they live
14
This is what comes with out of control religious zealotry getting into government. What ever happened to separation oh church and state?
22
Amen/s!
1
On the positive side, bus tickets are very inexpensive ... throw in several nights at a budget hotel, and you're still spending waaaaay less than you would on the first few months of caring for an infant, let alone 18 years..... Where there's a will, there is a way.
2
Not that easy. It's obviously time sensitive and many require someone to be there to accompany /drive.
3
And what does she do if she will lose her job if she misses those days of work?
4
As a foster parent myself, I’d like to know how many children who are mistreated, abused, or abandoned are the Gov and these state legislators taking care of?
Zero? Then step aside. For shame.
19
Governor Ivey if every life is precious, will you also pardon the 191 inmates on death row in your state?
30
Racism, discrimination, lack of access to healthcare means the majority of women getting abortions are poor and non-white (black, hispanic, other non-white). This is the demographic that will be predominantly affected. This also conversely means that if they’re unable to have abortions and forced to give birth, the population of non-whites will increase.
Guessing that’s not a side-effect these republican conservatives want or have thought through. It will be good in the long run when whites become a minority in states like Alabama. We might have to wait decades and may not see the change in our lifetimes, but the tables will turn one day.
The conservative white male days are limited, these people are in their death-throes, and are lashing out. The current extreme anti-abortion movement, Trump - are all symptoms of the rage of the finals days of this demographic.
5
I agree with you on conservative white male point however religious conservatism and misogyny is absolutely not limited to white males and to Christians. In fact show me one religion that doesn't discriminate against women. You'd be hardly pressed.
Republicans have become such hypocrites it is simply astountishing and astounding.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/us/politics/elliott-broidy-michael-cohen-payout.html
4
Im chocking on the collective sense of superiority and disgusting, overt actions motivated ONLY by religious beliefs.
Whatever happened to the separation of Church and State? How many asterisks are we prepared to apply to our constitution?
We don't know what "God" knows. Making law that denies the many faiths of others is a dangerous place to be.
9
Well we all know what's going to happen, they will all be sneaking over the stateline to states where they can get an abortion and pretend like nothing is happening.
5
The twisted logic of the so-called religious conservatives is nothing short of profound hypocrisy. They are blanket racists. They profane the name of Jesus and basically have no shame.
Abortion bans are direct assaults on people of color, and also on people of little financial means. The rich will be able to support their daughter's "illicit" pregnancies.
The rich will be able to afford to have their daughter's fly out of Indiana or Alabama to a blue state for an abortion after their similarly wealthy high school football player boyfriends impregnate them.
These laws are to prick and torture and abuse the poor. Like everything and anything that these horrific people calling themselves "Republican" stand for.
Enough. Impeach. Impeach the lot of them. We need our country back .Now.
8
Abortion issue must be handled very carefully taking into account all related problems like mothers' life in danger. I don't think there's any problem regarding the obstruction of abortion. it will have more benefits to the women undergoing pregnancy procedures instead to be aborted what's in their wombs.
How many times have you been pregnant?
4
Not surprisingly this law finds supporters in uber religious backward countries where women rights don't exist whatsoever. With blasphemy laws that are absolutely barbaric.
2
She is rich and white - she'll just pay for her granddaughters to go out of state if they "made a mistake". The two faced world of Republican women - all rich and do what they want anyway.
11
She won’t pay for her grand daughters. She never had children.
A primary argument here is abortion should be allowed because some children would otherwise be born poor.
Is that reasonable?
@Dr. John You're misreading the argument. Forcing someone to have a child they cannot afford and then not offering adequate assistance for food, education and health care, not to mention birth control, seems a one-sided and self-serving argument.
9
The primary argument is that you neither get to decide for others nor impose your beliefs on them. You don't want abortion then don't get one. I think that's simple enough even for you to understand doctor!
2
Next. Homes for unwed mothers? Church run institutions? What could possibly go wrong?
5
These politicians need to be impeached immediately. They clearly don't understand that the US constitution separates governance and religion. These religious zealots were proud to proclaim they are 'doing God's work'. Well if they want to do that they need to do it from a pulpit, not elected office. God, if it exists, has no place in US law making. Impeach them now!
8
When black Americans couldn’t take the Jim Crow laws of Montgomery Alabama any more they boycotted the public bus lines. Maybe we should boycott the state of Alabama. Hit them in the pocketbook. No tourism, no out of state college applicants, blue chip athletes, etc. I don’t do much business with Alabama anyway, but if the opportunity presents itself I will decline.
10
Who is doing business with Alabama? The only thing most anyone knows about the state is its football team.
2
She did it then....Nothing like women looking out for other women.
8
@RB She did it to avoid being voted out by a loud contingent. Just like the law, she's self-serving.
4
Even if you are pro life you know it is wrong to have a law that does not allow an exception for rape and incest.
10
@Oliver They did it on purpose, it will never be put into law, the court will strike it down and they can then appeal to the Supreme Court as a Constitutional issue. The purpose of this law is not to ban abortions in Alabama but to strike down Roe v. Wade. It's why they fought so hard for Brett Kavanaugh, that's his one purpose and he knows it.
9
Will never step foot on AL soil again.
8
Sadly, your country is going down a repressive, sanctimonious, religiously hateful and brutal rabbit hole. The smug fools that will deny a woman or child an abortion will enthusiastically deny the same people access to health care and quality education. They would rather see a child die than give them meaningful social supports. They stew in their lust for retribution and willingly murder criminals including the wrongly convicted. They are as hypocritical, inhuman and as foolish as anyone could want. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave ... really? That’s about as tragic a joke as one could ever want.
12
Another vote for theocratic mysogyny from Alabammie - always on the very lowest rungs of the livability lists.
5
Alabama, I heard that Mississippi was talkin bout you.
She said you're too chicken to pass a law like that.
What you going to do about that?
It is Alabama
what to expect ?
4
IF Roe is overturned, directly or in bits and spurts, it should immediately, net, simultaneously be replaced with a binding decision that bases a woman's right to end a pregnancy that is based on 1st Amendment grounds and on equal protection grounds, etc.
7
I fully expect every state that outlaws abortion to provide social assistance to the millions of families or individuals that can't afford children, the social structure to take care of all the unwanted children (housing, feeding, educating, etc.); one that doesn't simply disappear them into "homes" but gives them a high quality of life and future opportunity. I also expect these states to provide accurate and up-to-date contraception for both women and men.
Just kidding.
I fully expect those states that outlaw abortion to see crime rates increase to those levels in the 70's to late 80's. This is well documented in Freakonomics.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” - American philosopher George Santayana.
I suppose, on the "bright" side, this will certainly beef up our military in the next 20 to 30 years. With nowhere else to go, we should see a mass exodus to the most funded social program in the USA: The United States Armed Forces.
Funny how the right to life matters to some when that life is in the body of another, but as soon as that life can walk and breathe on its own, as soon as we can tell them how to think, we don't mind sending them armed into conflict before they are even allowed to drink.
And if they end up on the street, dying, addicted, begging for food? It's their fault.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
5
@TR
They already provide such assistance.
@Dr. John
They do not provide such assistance. Not at the levels that would afford unwanted children and single mothers a reasonable quality of life.
5
I think that had abortion been restricted to only situations where the mother's life was in danger or the child had severe deformities not conducive with life(or that would prove fatal such as Tay Sachs) this would not have needed to happen. Because far too many women have looked to abortion as an alternate form of birth control, with far too many having repeat abortions, abortions needed to be reigned in.
To me, as a woman, it is apparent that we are indeed talking about another person's life when we consider a fetus. It is genetically distinct from its mother. It's dependent on her of course, but so is a 2 year old; do we allow mothers to murder their 2 year olds because they no longer want them?
We need to make contraception widely available to all men and women of childbearing age. I do indeed believe all contraceptives should be available free of charge. Yes, sometimes contraception fails but not often if used properly.
What of rape or incest? That's a difficult question but also, in truth, rarely a factor in abortions. Most abortions are not for the product of a rape or incest.
And no one is forcing a woman to raise a child she can't support or doesn't want. We also need to make adoption services widely available. There are so many in the US who would love to adopt a newborn.
So just force women to carry pregnancies to term? Sure, that makes sense.
11
@Greenie An embryo, and fetuses up until a certain time, cannot live outside a woman's body. If it comes down to it, a 2 year old can live without his mother.
8
This is turning into a civil war and dividing the country. Interesting that the many of the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" states follow the same geographical boundaries as in our 19th century civil war. The same states that thought human slavery was OK also think it's OK to restrict women's rights and choices.
14
A former slave state that has a significant proportion of their population that doesn’t understand why that’s such a big deal. We should be surprised that they are looking for other civil liberties to curtail?
7
America wasn’t founded on oppression, it was founded on freedom. Which is a woman’s right! Whether you agree with another persons choice or not, when it comes to their personal life and body it is none. of. your. beeswax. Or mine! Each to their own.
I will never visit Alabama until this morally repugnant law is revoked and every single legislator who voted for it is out on their keester. Further I am advocating for a boycott of all businesses headquartered there.
On behalf of everyone who loves liberty, I hope you vote out every single legislator who supported this abomination and the governed who signed away your rights and mine. In the meantime, any Alabama folks who want their freedom back can come up our way anytime. You’re most welcome.
Sad to see you go, Alabama. Here’s hoping you return home to America, land of the free and home of the brave, some fine day. Until then, whatever the maps may say, you ain’t a real part of this great democracy.
9
Everyone understands this has nothing to do with morals or actual respect for life. Right? I mean, they're Republicans.
19
Could there be a more ugly image of a female... a female in power...who is effectively trying to prevent all women of child-bearing age....women far younger than her menopausal self...she is telling them all that if they accidentally get pregnant, they must pay for that mistake by dedicating the next 18 years of their lives to taking care of an unwanted child.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster for countless women and their unlucky children, not to mention for the community at large that will pay the consequences for a generation of girls/women resenting their unwanted children, and potentially neglecting them, etc.
6
I'm fine with abortion being legal, so as the man can opt out of supporting the child should the woman choose to keep it. I'm pro-choice for both sexes.
1
Makes perfect sense - Alabama style. Ladies - do not fret. Come to California to get the procedure done. We don't put up with that ridiculous nonsense here. Even if you have to buy an inexpensive Greyhound bus ticket and rent a cheap motel room. And there are free clinics here for those that need it.
1
Partying like it's 1899...
22
No woman chooses to get pregnant in order to have an abortion. I would never encourage abortion. But I would never Presume that it was my right to tell some scared and desperate young woman that she had to have a baby she could not care for or a child that was the product of rape or incest. The travesty of the pro-life movement is that the same people who would do anything to make sure a woman continues her pregnancy are the same people who would deny the same woman and child decent healthcare. Many children born with pre existing conditions in our society have substandard healthcare. The pro-life groups provide help for the first few months after pregnancy, but their help disappears as the baby grows into a toddler. Meanwhile the young woman suffers and worries about a child they cannot really afford to bring up by them. The father of the child is never held accountable. Most states have cumbersome regulationsThat make the mother jump through hoops in order to get child support. The pro lifers are never around to help these women once the pregnancy is complete. When are men going to be held responsible. Oh and let’s not forget that the very people who are so pro life and antiabortion are also concerned with impeding a woman’s right to get contraceptives. Women Should not be held prisoner by someone else’s beliefs.
52
Please stop this madness! What is happening in Alabama?
I, and millions of other Americans, men and women, are sickened by these events and are wondering... does "President" Trump support these state laws? I'm sure "Justice" Kavanaugh has an "opinion."
Who is Kay Ivey?
I've never heard of you but guess what-- your signature on a piece of PAPER in Alabama means NOTHING. Abortion in the US will remain legal and nothing... including a signature from an unknown "government official" like you... will EVER change a woman's right for choice in this matter.
13
Unfortunately, this is going to the Supreme Court and Roe v Wade will be overturned. Trump promised it in his 3rd debate with Clinton. The Republicans have been planning this for decades, and have just been waiting for a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. Bye-bye freedom.
3
@Chris
Aborting a viable child is “freedom”?
1
Ok!!
So where are Trump’s tweets? Did he go to bed early tonight?
Where is “justice” Kavanaugh? On vacation in Mexico?
News flash: Roe v Wade will NEVER be overturned in this country because women outnumber men. Period.
3
Women should sue the state for the hospital bill, since they legally don’t have a choice in keeping the child.
Abortion or raise taxes to provide welfare, which one do you want?
8
Why complain about Isis, the Taliban, Al-Quaida, Boko Haram, etc. when you have the Alabama Senate and Governor?
Fundamentalists of every stripe are clearly the enemy of women, children and humanity in general. They are truly evil (live backwards).
And if these so-called "Christians" truly believed in life everlasting, they would understand life is neither created nor destroyed, and wouldn't be so arrogant about the experience in this world, in this dimension, in this incarnation.
27
Remember when candidate Trump stepped in it by saying the woman should be liable too? But after a flood of criticism he reversed that. Guess what? He was right!
I’m not here to argue for or against abortion. What I am saying is that the woman has agency in the process. Abortion providers are not promenading with a sandwich board, soliciting strange women to come on in for an abortion. It is the pregnant woman who seeks the services of a provider.
So how come the provider is charged with a crime while the women is not even considered complicit? How did that happen?
3
@Puny Earthling
Why is the woman (or underage girl, all too often)
'considered complicit' when the sperm donor is not
even part of the equation. I invite you to think how you
might feel, if you were a teenage girl who thought she
was pregnant after returning from a trip with her father ?
1
@Puny Earthling. They are targeting providers in order to scare providers into shutting down. Then, even if the law is eventually invalidated as unconstitutional, it won't matter because there won't be any local providers anyway so they will have won by default.
This and similar actions in other states are a national tragedy.
The GOP believe women are human chattel. Period.
To think that I could potentially have NO CHOICE but to either (1) bear an unwanted pregnancy and deal with the lifelong repercussions - financial, emotional, physical; or (2) bear a wanted pregnancy that has fatal abnormalities and instead of having the choice on how to end that pregnancy, I would be forced to wait its inevitable death either inside me or in my arms.
Forced to bear and birth like a cow. Abortion restrictions are dehumanizing with zero regard for the repercussions to a woman. A woman without agency.
Can you believe it? This is what we're getting in 2019? The fight over whether women should have AGENCY.
14
@someone Not only forced to wait until the unviable fetus died inside of you (keeping in mind that the risk to your own health increases the longer you keep carrying it), but possibly forced to walk around with the dying fetus inside of you, as you run the risk of dying of septicaemia, just as happened to that poor woman in Ireland a few years ago.
Another reason why "Georgia On My Mind" is one of the saddest songs ever.
3
I doubt that these issues will be resolved before November, 2020. Similar to something ... anything ... to improve or replace the ACA.
But under Trump's lead, the white males can claim that THEY deserve your votes since they are trying.
1
In this day and age, when we have read about: sports doctors convicted for raping women athletes, preachers having sex with minors, women graduate students and women professionals harassed on the job, legislators sexually harassing their women staff, women in the military raped by their leadership, .....where do these State Governments get it in their heads that these radical anti-abortion laws are going to do right by their constituents?
11
simple minded solutions that actually create more problems . . .
is it any coincidence that the state of Alabama ranks in the lowest 5% of state funding for education?
15
Amen
1
I will not do business with any company from Alabama or having businesses in Alabama nor buy any product from that backwards state. What is wrong with these people? They are christian in name only.
22
Kay Ivey is a traitor to all girls and women. What a monster.
29
Indeed, she is a monster. The US is spawning (pun intended) these monsters with frightening frequency. If you don’t rid your nation of this appalling nightmare, given authority by a nightmare President, 200 years of social progress is doomed and your country will devolve into a cruel dystopian nightmare.
9
Too bad the governor is so wizened that she can't get pregnant and not want to continue on with it.
It would be interesting to watch her disappear for a while until the matter was quietly settled.
Such a total disgrace to her sex and her office.
26
A baby born prior to 22 weeks has a near zero chance of living and even then it would have significant probability of having serious defects that will affect it for its, likely significantly shortened, lifetime. If a fetus cannot live without the mother, is it an independent being, a person?
If Roe v. Wade was to be overturned due to advances in medical science it should be because there is evidence that the fetus is capable of being a human being, prior to 22 weeks the fetus cannot survive without the woman and therefore is nothing more than a part of her body that she has 100% control over. Even after 22 weeks, if the State insists that a woman carry a fetus to term it should be prepared to support the woman until the birth of the child, and then support the child until adulthood.
7
@Carlos
In the event the child is born disabled, support it throughout its life. This includes paying a descent wage to the direct support professionals who’ll be needed to provide this support....and, I’m talking a starting wage of at least $25/hr with locally adjustments.
3
#1 being best and #50 the worst here is the latest scores for Alabama. Any questions?
#46 Health Care
#50 Education
#45 Economy
#38 Infrastructure
#45 Opportunity
#23 Fiscal Stability
#45 Crime & Corrections
#35 Natural Environment
30
@Hal
Splendid - and sad.
2
@Hal And Alabama has the country's second-highest infant mortality rate.
7
Only 3% of abortions are due to rape or incest.
What causes the other 97%?
3
@Dr. John
Irresponsible men.
30
@Dr. John the kid who was raped is not interested that she’s one of just 3%. Would you be if it were your daughter?
20
@kagni
Go to another state for services.
When I heard yesterday that the law had been passed, I once again made a donation to NARAL and Planned Parenthood (the latter indicating the donation should go to PP Southeast, which serves Alabama). I urge others to join me. These organizations will be on the front lines of any fight against this draconian law.
17
@JenD
YES! Shall we pledge that every time the word Alabama comes up we donate to PP or NARAL?! I sent $100 last week just on the fury I feel at these sick Republican politicians. They are just trying to out-do each other in being "Christian" and expecting that at the Pearly Gates they will get some kind of special pat on the back or a lapel pin. These are sick, sick people but I feel no compassion for them.
3
What companies / produce in Alabama should we be boycotting?
17
Now you know exactly why Liberals tried so desperately to destroy Judge Kavanaugh, even accusing him of heinous crimes as a 14-year old boy.
4
@Dr. John
Now we know why the Federalist Society supported him.
9
@Dr. John
Oh for crying out loud. He tried to have his way with a kid who was terrified. At least while you are blowing smoke, work in a fact or two.
6
Have any Alabama legislators who voted for this bill seen a pregnant child, a victim of rape and incest ? And I wonder what they would do if it should happen to a child in their family.
22
Shame on you, Kay Ivey. Shame on the Alabama legislature. And shame on all of us for allowing this to happen. As an Alabama native, I am embarrassed. As a gay woman, I am grateful that I got out early enough in my life that I was not ossified by this toxic culture.
30
I say good. Let the issue be decided by the states. Its not the end of the world. Drive to another state if needed. I'm tired of hearing about the abortion debate every election cycle. All it does is divert and divide the electorate from the real issues that need to be focused on. Let the states decide and then let the people decide if they want to live there. Enough already.
3
As far as the right to choose is concerned, I think most people would choose to live just about anywhere other than Alabama.
31
We may need to have sanctuary cities for women who need to leave these self-holy states. They would be considered refugees fleeing religious persecution. The sad religion they ascribe to is personal liberty.
13
Donny's Idea of MAGA
Sodemy laws are next
to be followed by Jim crow
Then the elimination of the Voting Rights act and Civil rights legislation
14
The far right Pro-Life movement is in full on warfare bound and determined to subjugate and control women's bodies. The STATE will henceforth determine for women all aspects of her reproductive health from what kind of medications to procedures and she WILL DELIVER the child.
In fact, some have suggested that the fetus is a complete person entitled to be granted a tax exemption, Really? Would the fetus have to file their own return? Or would the tax exemption be for the father or the mother?
I would think that the mother in whose body the fetus is would have the right of the tax exemption because who is in fact the father?
If the father wishes to claim such an exemption then I suggest that there be full on paternity laws. About what the father of a fetus MUST DO for the fetus as required by the state. Such as mandated financial support for the fetus BY THE STATE. Because isn't it the wish of the PRO LIFE movement all about the love and protection of the fetus and who better than the father to contribute to the love and protection of their fetus?
What's that? That is not what the PRO LIFE movement wants? No duties and responsibilities upon the father? Just the mother?
Now we're getting to the nitty gritty truth. It's ONLY women that should be denied bodily (health) autonomy.
17
I know now that I nor anyone in my family will ever visit Alabama and we will not buy any products that come from Alabama.
We will exercise our choice.
19
Repeatedly, the people of Alabama have voted for the GOP. Elections have consequences. Let the people reap what they have sewn. They can change this if they want to.
5
What the anti abortionists forget or conveniently ignore is that no one pro abortion! We just defend the right to choose. Here is the rub, if you don't want it then for heavens sake DON'T GET ONE. But your agenda is to impose your convection on everyone else! Who gave you such right? And as soon as you bring your religion into this, you know that it's unconstitutional. But then again you don't care about the constitution.
13
Why is the mot backwards, prejudiced states do this? As if Alabama did have enough of a bad rap. Do these states want to scare of companies, employers, employees, tourists by taking themselves out of the world and joining radical countries like Saudi Arabia in the over zealot anti-woman views to repress women’s rights and invade their bodies with government decisions? I thought they were against government invading our homes?
18
To justify laws based on religious beliefs is both absurd and ludicrously arrogant. It’s time for the atheists to take back their country from these religious bigots.
17
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
22
'Bama, the home of racism, bigotry, ignorance, the Klan, anger, misogyny and hatred.
Any way we could give the entire state to, say, Iran or Iraq, where the governments are more moderate and intelligent?
14
Vote. Out. Every GOP. From president to.....you fill in the blank.
21
Conservatives. You may not have an abortion, but wait, if you're poor and you have kids, tough luck, no help from this corrupt regime. You're on your own.
MAGA.... Making America Greedy Again
15
As a pro-choice person I think these laws are going to be the fall of the authoritarian trump republican troglodytes. The laws passed are so restrictive, the recent Catholic SCOTUS members and the strong public opinion in favor of Roe mean that these stupid people have bitten off more than they can chew.
A bunch of old white men and spinsters are forcing themselves on a rightfully angered female electorate who are massively in favor of Roe. What could go wrong? There is going to be a reckoning at the next election and the near dead oldsters are going to be put into their place before they are put in the ground.
March, vote for your rights, kick the stupid people out of your lives in 2020.
12
What will be most difficult will be the lives of the inbreed, whom will become unwanted, and the young children who will be forced into giving birth. These will be the victims of this legislation.
5
@Dom Maranski
What???
Oh yes Doc, Haven’t you heard? this barbaric ruling doesn’t exclude rape and incest victims. Who is taking care of the child of the 12 year old raped by her father?
9
When someone dies in a car accident, there is a police investigation to see if someone was at fault. Similarly, with a law like that passed in Alabama, every time a woman has a miscarriage, aka a spontaneous abortion, it seems like there will necessarily need to be a police investigation to determine if someone caused this to happen. And then there will be grey areas: did a pregnant woman who had a miscarriage take good care of herself? Was she heard saying that she wished she weren't pregnant?
11
A sad day for women. Demonstrates how little respect lawmakers have for women’s rights. Not proud to be an American in this country these days.
22
It's a sad day when an organized body of government puts rapists ahead of their victims. Then again, this type of thinking puts would-be mass murderers ahead of their victims.
18
This is crazy! As a gynecologist who is concerned about rising maternal mortality, I am infuriated about legislation about what a woman can and can’t do with their bodies. Abortion is health care! To deny abortion is denying appropriate healthcare. Women will die for sure because of these laws. But those of us who support access to healthcare and safe, legal abortion will rise up against this atrocity.
49
Here's a win-win idea. Gather all the red states that want to keep the illegal immigrants out, and let's build a wall around them. They can bask in the hot, hot sun with no social security, no health insurance, no safety net of any kind, low pay, and no education, and they can keep all their babies. We'll have our social and economic equality, social security, universal health insurance, good safety net, and we'll welcome immigrants and provide higher education for all. That's a total win-win! They even get the wall they want!
40
Very compelling!
5
Maybe the Alabamian Republican officials will be like the wealthy parents getting their children into prestigious colleges. The daughters and granddaughters will get abortions because dad or granddad will cheat to get it (without consequences).
11
It is moving to watch Alabama as it labors to claw its way down to where it can proudly proclaim itself the most primitive of all the 50 states in the union.
With competition from the likes of Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky, achieving that 50th ranking is a mind-blowing accomplishment.
I would urge all to join in giving Alabama special recognition by boycotting the state in all ways possible. The loss of business coupled with the state government's decision to institute sharia law will go a long way toward helping Alabama achieve a generational lock on that coveted 50th position as the nation's most benighted state.
Well done, Alabama, you must be proud.
19
So much for the free world. America has entered the dark ages. Shame on the government of Alabama.
14
The people of that state, it's legistlature, and its governor are shameful, ignorant, bigoted, and hateful.
The images in the photo are quite reminiscnent of Bosch.
10
@Bob
Sorry for my misspellings!
I believe the appropriate word is 'deplorable'.
34
If you adjust for Alabama's handicap for always being 3000 years behind the times this abortion law makes sense, to them.
11
Funny how much Alabamians resemble human beings- even the white male Republicans- despite their not having the internal equipment that would allow them to fully pass as authentic members of our species.
9
@stu freeman - this kind of comment is designed to do nothing more than antagonize and de-humanize. I wholeheartedly don’t agree with what happened in Alabama, but liberals and conservatives unlike need to stop treating the opposing side as though they are not human. That’s a dark path to go down no matter what side you’re on.
2
Will the State of Alabama promise to provide food, housing, healthcare, and equality after these children are born. Or does the rule change to sink or swim? I believe that the most backward State in our Union will choose to let them drown and perish. Very Christian of them.
25
@Cliff R
So, poor children should not be allowed to be born?
2
@Dr. John: I think you know his point is that is these people truly cared about children they'd provide supports (which they do not).
12
@Anne
There is no welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, etc in Alabama?
If these states were being intellectually consistent, they would also pass laws punishing the women who obtain abortions. Accessory to a crime, anyone? They won’t, but it highlights the legal thin ice these laws are on. Handmaid’s Tale come to life.
5
Perhaps all men who vote against a woman’s right to choose should be subject to mandatory vasectomies.
33
Hate to pick sides but I will. In Canada a abortion can be had well up into the term. At birth the fetus becomes a person, and not before. The women in the USA must be able to control their body, not some rather old legislature. I read this newspaper and the Washington Post and so many of the articles make me wonder ,just what in heck is happening south of the 49th. And no matter what is happening down there we hope it doesn't head north. We had three kids, and now four grandkids. The idea of destroying a in verto fetus is just plain cruel.
1
Thankfully my daughter has moved to Canada--a far more civilized and humane country than the US.
8
I used to be a liberal and felt for people who voted against their self interest or those who chose not to vote but now I find a side of me is almost gleeful that choosing not to vote for Hillary or not to vote led to this Supreme Court and what is happening. Not sure how many Bernie supporters I reminded that Supreme Court seats were on the line and that was not persuasive.
3
This is truly sickening. A bunch of self centered politicians and holier than thou bigots are taking away a woman's inalienable right to decide what's best for her body AND for the child growing inside her. A child she may not be able to take care of, educate, feed properly and deliver to the unborn child a chance for a healthy, joyous life. Instead, they want to force her to carry a baby she cannot take care of and when that baby is born, give her up to the state to raise, and we all know how well states do at that job that they refuse to fund properly and dump the child in some ward resembling juvenile hall.
I thought we got away from this when poor houses and work halls were banned in the 19th century. For shame! For shame!
15
More than 30 years ago as a new resident in Surgery in North Carolina I took care of a young women who had a back room abortion. She developed a severe infection taking three months to die. Nothing we could do saved here.Never, ever again do I want to see that repeated.
29
God Bless You Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama. You have shown you respect life.
2
If men respected rights they would not have unsafe sex period.
48
@Jonathan
Ok Jonathan - where's the universal healthcare to "respect life"????
Or maybe God doesn't care once the kids exit the womb?
46
@Jonathan Oh, oops, except for that death penalty thing!
49
Alabama underfunds its CHiP funding; doesn't support durable adoption pathways and now this.
I hope every so-called 'pro-life' person hugs their daughters today and tells them:
"you are so lucky to have been valued when you were only potential life, a mere cluster of cells - because now that you are actually living and breathing, this country does not care about you."
27
"Red states rushed to pass more restrictions and blue states to pass protections."
the red and the blue
rush to the rescue of who?
not any father
2
@tim torkildson I believe in Alabama and it's fellow backwards sharia states, men should go to jail for life if they don't support their spawn. And,if the woman wants, she should be able to force him to raise it.
15
@Tim torkildson. Come on, it's not the women who are adequately supported by their future babies' fathers who are rushing to have abortions. Nice straw man argument. Gimme a break!
1
So now that Trump has appointed enough judges up to and including the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, the time has come for Alabama to lead the way. Elections matter.
5
@Philly Carey
So will you be adopting the children born from rape or incest? Do you believe that the victim should be punished more than the criminal?
15
@Patricia Dadmun
What I believe is that this is a cynical effort by people who have absolutely no sympathy for the "already born" among us, who have no confidence in a woman's ability to make gut-wrenching, life and death decisions, who care not one iota for the rights of women. For everyone who stayed home, or voted third party, or said there really was no difference between Trump and Clinton, you were wrong. That's what I believe.
8
@Philly Carey
If elections mattered Hillary would be President and Congress would be majority Democrat.
5
To conservatives, this law is common sense. Conservatives believe that abortion is a violation of a human being's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why? Because conservatives believe the fetus is a human being. Liberals don't. It's that simple.
Liberals will say, "What about rape/incest?" We would never allow the killing of a human being who was born of incest or rape outside the womb. Should we allow a mother to execute their 1-year old child of born of rape/incest?
Liberals will say, "It's a woman's choice." Yet it's the very idea that a fetus has no choice that makes abortion so reprehensible. Pro-Choice defenders are lucky their mothers didn't abort them. Half of all aborted fetuses have XX chromosomes and would become women. Finally, the mothers of the mothers chose not to abort them. How is it moral to determine that someone will be banished to non-existence rather than granted the opportunity of life.
Liberals will say, "Well after birth conservatives don't care about children." This misunderstands the small government approach to community. Conservatives believe that neighbors, churches, and non-profits deliver better care to children than the government. Socialistic programs aren't necessarily a sign of "care" as many on these socialistic programs will readily admit. To complain about the Republican public policy in an abortion argument misses the point of what it means to be a free American not reliant on the federal government.
2
@S. L.
People like S. L. apparently believe that anti-abortion legislation will solve the problems caused by unwanted pregnancy; unfortunately, it just drives abortion underground.
No one takes any joy in pointing out that abortions will continue; they will just be performed in the proverbial "back alleys" instead of in clinics.
[Remainder of ignorant riff on socialism, small government, etc. ignored for now]
31
@S. L.
“...Conservatives believe that neighbors, churches, and non-profits deliver better care to children than the government...”
Well, look around, hows that been working? Obviously it doesn’t work well on the scale of a country. Just a lazy cop out.
32
@S. L.
" Conservatives believe that neighbors, churches, and non-profits deliver better care to children than the government. "
Uh, what about the Central American children being "cared for" right now by this government? Any room up there in Greater Boston for a few of those children? Former fetuses need love, too.
I find charitable giving on the part of prominent GOP politicians has always been far less than your statement would imply.
18
Alabama is a perfect example of what life in a theocracy looks like. With this misogynistic law, the ignorant Christian extremists have won, while the enlightened idea of the separation of church and state has lost. As long as willfully ignoramt fundamentalists like Mike Pence etal., have access to power, the rest of us must resist and oppose their hateful regressive attempts to turn back the clock to a time where women were mere chattel.
Vote them out in 2020 !
14
Women are the template for the human race.
We are not baby incubators.
We are the door into Life.
We bring forth babies when they will be loved,
Fed, educated, and treated right.
We spare them suffering at all costs.
You cannot tell us what we know about their future.
Only we can.
6
This is horrible and serious but the timing is such that it’s a distraction from Trump’s crime boss like take over our country. Barr has shown that he’ll protect Trump no matter what and he’ll go after anybody Trump wants attacked. The hard liner Republicans are trampling women’s rights and the rights of families. No abortion for rape or incest is terrible but a women should have the right to choose no matter what.
6
Alabama seems to enjoy proving its Third World status.
8
@Paul
Frankly I think this comment is unfair towards so called Third World countries.
At least, Third World countries are typically striving towards First World status, not the other way around.
8
People who are blaming and focusing on Alabama are missing the big picture. Places like Ohio are next. We need to take this seriously and mobilize.
6
Others to follow, but it took Alabama to set the stage. Gorsuch & Kavanaugh will win the day for their Boss and his base. Act 3 of the Trump farce will restore the country to its fictional past and women to their 'place.'
At long last we will be "Great Again."
3
Hey Andy (yes you, Cuomo [and every other blue donor state governor and legislature])—
time to rewrite the state's tax provisions to opt out of funding any other state via federal redistribution with whose laws and policies the state deems inappropriate or illegal.
1
There goes the old 'more women in power = more empathic governance' fairytale...
5
Having a daughter of College age I will boycott/ignore any invitations to any state that restricts access to abortion. I will not go on vacation there or send my child to such a fear-mongering, backward and hateful state. That is within my power and I will use it!
7
The mother has to bear the child, what are the responsibilities of the father? Is he required to provide child support? If the mother is destitute will the state of Alabama make sure this child has proper food, clothing, health care and a good education?
Will the twenty five white men who voted this draconian law into existence agree that should their daughter ever gets pregnant by rape or incest she will always carry the baby to term.
Will you put a doctor in jail for life even if he is a major donor?
8
@ Lee Elliot- but legislators daughters are not stuck without abortion. People with money could always abort safely. This is like everything republican , an attack on the poor.
3
from "Inherit the Wind"
Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow)
Courtroom Speech
Play, 1955
Film, 1960
I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially.
You can only destroy.
You can only punish.
And I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera,destroys everyone it touches,
its upholders as well as its defiers. Soon you may ban books and newspapers and soon you may turn Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man!
If you can do one, you can do the other!
Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.and soon, your honor...
with banners flying and with drums beating,
we'll be marching backward!
Backward!
Through the glorious ages of that 16th century
when bigots burned the man who dared bring
enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.
Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding
10
This country is now much too large to hold the diversity of opinion of its members and to codify them in binary laws that satisfy everyone.
Let the red states go where they want. Please. Leave us progressives to enact our values, to bring our society into the 21st century and to finally get the benefit of all of our taxes (instead of subsidizing the red states).
8
@David Appell
Yes! Totally! The East Coast agrees with you! Why do we have to subsidize these backwater places? Let them have their laws and us ours.
3
And where is the rush to pass laws restricting or regulating firearms that have no legitimate use other than to slaughter innocent school children? These people (read Republicans) are such hypocrites!
9
Only one question to ask these manly legislators.
Will saying a prayer for the women and children who are raped make everything OK?
8
The Governor is a woman. Maybe I heard wrong but haven't they been saying when women are running the world it's going to be a much better place. Who would of thought they're just like men?
What's with all the zenophobic remarks about people outside of your social geographic strata. Those white southern Christians might as well be jihadist. Are you sure the Russians are to blame.
Maintain the course and keep up the good work. It's tough being right all time, I know. Except there is a very good chance the Supreme Court won't let it remain law. You know those conservatives and their respect for legal precedent. At least I hope so. If not, all I can say you blew it again. Good luck.
1
Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi were slave states. These people's great grandparents were some of the most egregious abusers of humans who have ever lived. Their abuse of humans goes back centuries. They are living up to their ancestors' evil.
7
Welcome to the 19th century. Where ignorance, hypocrisy, misogyny and stupidity starts at the top.
Wonder how the women of ‘mericu will vote in 2020...when it’s too late?
2
Alabama continues to prove how backward it looks for its future policies. I am not sure why any woman would want to live in a state where the state government controls your body; I doubt any man who voted in favor would allow women to have them castrated if they committed a violent sex act. Nor do I understand why any of the black players on University of Alabama sports teams stays in Alabama. The new law that has been promulgated will have a bigger impact on minorities. The state of Alabama certainly likes their almost all black football team but treats their race like dirt. Not sure why any business would move their operations there either. Alabama is moving to the stone age.
5
time to boycott all these retrograde states. They want to punish women for having sex - that's all it is.
4
Boycott what? What do they produce? These backward states just drain the resources provided by the coastal elites.
1
@Religionistherootofallevil
tourism, for one
@alank Sorry, I didn't realize there is anything worth going there for.
So if an abortion is the murder of a baby, killing an innocent life, then why doesn’t the mother get the death penalty? Isn’t that the “Christian” thing to do?
3
The dichotomy here that no one seems to understand is this: the right to lifers are only interested in protecting the unborn, but once you’re born you’re on your own. Too many of our children are thrown into a cauldron of hatred, greed and fear from the beginning. They suffer abuse from those they’re taught to respect, like their priests, scoutmasters, camp counselors, and yes, even their parents. And if that wasn’t enough, in many cases they aren’t given enough education to make a decent living so they end up as cannon fodder in endless wars. How’s that for the right to life? Let’s protect our children after their born and leave the question of birth up to the women who have to carry them to term ... or not.
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@robert lachman Does that analysis not cut both ways? Pro-choicers are deeply concerned with the welfare and well being of people... unless they're not born yet, in which case they're private property to be discarded at will by a single individual.
I'm not taking a position on abortion here, just pointing out that one can find hypocrisy wherever one looks, because humans (all of us) hold many contradictory beliefs and inconsistent positions.
@Gregory Scott
But the abortion debate is about legislating hypocrisy for political gain, which is pretty much what hard right legislators have been doing for years. Unfortunately, it works all too well to divide and conquer the people they claim to represent. You can be pretty sure the legislators who push this kind of thing wouldn’t think twice about getting an abortion for a family member. They just don’t want the government to pay for poor people to get one. As for your comment about pro-choicers considering their unborn children as private property to be discarded at will, I hope you understand that the days of considering your baby property or your wife chattel ended a long time ago.
1
@Gregory Scott. But legally, embryos ARE property. That's why no one blinks an eye when extraneous ones are destroyed after IVF. I don't hear the masses crying out that that is murder -- because it's not, any more than God is a murderer for allowing the miscarriage of something like 1/3 of all pregnancies.
Per Fox News, 60% of Americans say keep Roe, as is.
Those (Republican men) opposed typically change their mind when their mistress gets pregnant.
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@CD: They can usually send the mistress to another state or to Europe. And this law isn't about them or their women, just about 'those other women.'
3
When they say that a woman can be charged if she leaves the state to go to a state with legal abortions, does that mean that some states own the women who live there? How will they monitor women to make sure they aren't pregnant when they leave the state? It's so creepy.
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In Alabama, every white* life is a sacred gift from God. All other lives are less than, as evidenced by a state where the median income for whites is higher than that of blacks and latinos, respectively, and where the poverty rate for blacks and latinos is nearly double that of whites. The same majority white, male Conservative politicians in Alabama who passed this law also groan about a Welfare state they help create with despicable, anachronistic policies like the one the governor signed into law today. In Alabama, where Conservatives condemn government involvement into people's lives, they are perfectly happy with the State government involving itself in intimate personal decisions about healthcare that only a mother should be allowed to make. All this law will do is make Alabama an even less desirable place to live, visit, and invest in.
http://alabamapossible.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AP_PovertyFactSheet_2018_Web.pdf
3
@Tony C If your story were true, wouldn't these racist politicians be in favor of abortion rights, because women who get abortions are disproportionately Black and Hispanic?
The simplest explanation by far is that those who support restrictions on abortion rights actually believe abortion is morally wrong. I'm not taking a position, just pointing out that sometimes a duck really is just a duck.
1
If the granddaughter of the Gov. were carting a baby through rape or incest, guess who would have a fast abortion!
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It’s Alabama for god’s sake. What do we expect. These folks are still trapped in a mindset dating back to 1868. What makes this especially cruel is the fact that this all out assault on the reproductive sovereignty of individual women to make private decisions concerning their own bodies was signed into law by a barren, right-wing, pseudo Christian WOMAN.
3
@Tim Prendergast: Yeah. But I bet Ohio is next. It's not just Alabama.
1
This just makes me sick and ashamed to be an American.
The same god who visits hurricanes and tsunamis upon the most vulnerable populations of the world apparently also delights in arranging the impregnation of innocent girls by their rapists. And a large swath of American society pays devotion to this god every Sunday.
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@day owl
It not much of a believer in a punishing god but I think Satan or the Devil would be the blame. When things go bad it's Satan's work if you believe in those things.
@JoeG
Umm... I think you need to re-read your Bible. By your description, Satan would have powers equal to G-d, which I am pretty sure is not how he’s described in the scripture. He’s a fallen angel, not the Creator.
1
Puzzled why rational people would want to continue living in Alabama.
Women need full reproductive healthcare. Access to contraceptives, care to have healthy pregnancies. And, when chosen by a woman, safe abortions within the law.
All of those factors are part of reproductive health.
The irony is that in jurisdictions where there are no abortion rights, there is usually terrible healthcare for pregnancies,
and scant education on pregnancy prevention.
Who on earth would choose to remain in such a retrograde place? Or attend college there, or open a business there? What tech company, for example, would operate there? A place that treats women like this.
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Boycott!
1