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NY Times, May 9, 2019
As States Race to Limit Abortions, Alabama Goes Further, Seeking to
Outlaw Most of Them
By Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Amid a flurry of new limits on abortion being sought
in states around the nation, Alabama is weighing a measure that would go
further than all of them — outlawing most abortions almost entirely.
The effort in Alabama, where the State Senate could vote as soon as
Thursday, is unfolding as Republicans, emboldened by President Trump and
the shifting alignment of the Supreme Court, intensify a long-running
campaign to curb abortion access.
Yet the Alabama measure is also a departure from the incremental
strategy that abortion critics have often pursued: There is nothing
gradual about the sweeping ban that the state’s lawmakers are considering.
Alabama’s measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of
pregnancy, from conception on, and would criminalize the procedure for
doctors. A doctor could be charged with a felony, and face up to 99
years in prison, for performing an abortion in most circumstances; a
doctor could risk a 10-year prison term for attempting an abortion. Some
exceptions were being considered, including provisions added to the
measure on Wednesday that would allow abortions in cases of rape or incest.
“The back door hasn’t worked, I’ll just tell you,” said Representative
Rich Wingo, a Republican from Tuscaloosa County and an architect of the
Alabama legislation, which the State House approved last month. “Other
methods haven’t worked to date. This is a yes or no, up or down.”
Some measures in other states have tested the boundaries of court
protections for abortion in various ways. But the expansive Alabama
legislation stands in direct opposition to the Supreme Court’s landmark
Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973, which legalized abortion up to the point
when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a
pregnancy.
As with the long list of abortion limits being weighed in other places,
the Alabama measure is aimed at reaching the Supreme Court, where
conservatives have been buoyed by the arrival of Justice Brett M.
Kavanaugh. Alabama Republicans say they want the court to re-examine the
core issues in Roe.
“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the
bill goes directly to that,” Mr. Wingo said. “Courts can do — and have
done — many things good and bad, but we would hope and pray that they
would go and that they would overturn Roe.”
The differing tactics of abortion opponents have been on display this
year, as new abortion restrictions have sped through statehouses in the
South and Midwest. On Tuesday, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a
so-called heartbeat bill that essentially bans abortions after six weeks
of pregnancy — a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.
Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio have passed similar laws this year, and
legislators in South Carolina and Tennessee considered comparable
restrictions.
Other states have taken more limited steps. Arkansas reduced by two
weeks the time frame in which a woman can have an abortion legally.
Missouri legislators have been considering an array of new limits.
“This legislative session could turn out to be the most harmful for
women’s health in decades,” said Leana Wen, president of the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America.
The proposal in Alabama, where voters amended the state Constitution
last year to declare that the “public policy of this state is to
recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of
unborn children, including the right to life,” is the latest
far-reaching measure with a reasonable prospect of passing.
On Wednesday, a committee of the State Senate sent the measure on to the
full Senate, after amending it to include exceptions for cases of rape
or incest — exceptions that were not in the version of the bill the
State House passed. The House version allowed an exception only in the
case of a “serious health risk” to the mother.
Elsewhere, abortion opponents have urged states to adopt rules like
waiting periods and mandatory counseling, with the notion that some
limits are better than none. “My philosophy is, you throw spaghetti up
against the wall and you see what sticks,” said Tom McClusky, president
of March for Life Action, a private nonprofit advocacy group.
But in Alabama, abortion critics said that a piecemeal approach has
proved inadequate. Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life
Coalition and a lawyer who drafted much of the pending bill, said that
more limited legislation in other states had failed to accomplish the
central goal: to force the Supreme Court to decide whether Roe should
remain binding.
“The heartbeat bills are in many ways a waste of time, because you’re
going below the standard of Roe,” he said. “Why not go all the way?”
So Mr. Johnston said he sought to write what he called a “clean bill,”
straightforward legislation intended to force federal courts to
unequivocally take a side on the basic legality of abortion.
“We avoid a lot of other issues, like morning-after pills, because
that’s not what we’re after,” he said. “What’s important to address is
if an unborn child is a person.”
Last month, the State House approved its version of the bill by a vote
of 74-3, after more than two dozen Democrats walked out of the chamber
in protest. Although Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not publicly
committed to signing the legislation, Republican lawmakers said they
believe she will.
In Alabama, a conservative state whose capital is dominated by
Republicans, the number of abortion clinics has fallen to three from 13
over about the last two decades. In past years, lawmakers set a 48-hour
waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling
before undergoing procedures; and required minors to receive consent for
an abortion from a parent or legal guardian.
Language in the new measure likens abortion to the Holocaust and other
20th-century atrocities, stating that the number of legal abortions
performed since the Roe decision amounted to “more than three times the
number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s
gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocid
Critics of the Alabama proposal have promised litigation if Governor
Ivey signs it into law, regardless of the potential legal risks of
revisiting the issue in the courts. Planned Parenthood has said it
intends to sue to block the legislation immediately, on the ground that
it would unlawfully restrict access to abortion, a right that has been
reaffirmed by the courts since Roe.
Even as some states have moved to limit abortions, other states with
Democratic-leaning governments have rushed this year to fortify legal
protections for the procedure. This week, Vermont took steps toward a
constitutional amendment enshrining a “right to personal reproductive
autonomy.” And in January, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York signed a
measure that guaranteed a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.
Staci Fox, the Atlanta-based president and chief executive of Planned
Parenthood Southeast, said that attempts to limit abortion — even those
that are ultimately fought in court — have a chilling effect.
“They are saying to women, ‘We don’t trust you to make these deeply
personal decisions,’” Ms. Fox said. “It can be very confusing — what is
real and what is not. And we’ve been hearing from concerned women as
these bills bubble up.
Jenna King, 27, said she was closely watching what might happen next
with Alabama’s proposal for a nearly complete ban. She recalled how her
father, a Southern Baptist pastor, had been furious when she told him
she was pregnant at 17 and wanted an abortion. Nonetheless, she said, he
drove her to an abortion clinic in Birmingham, about 90 minutes away
from their home.
Ms. King said she believed the procedure had given her the opportunity
to graduate from college and then have a child when she felt prepared.
She now has a 2-year-old son, and said she plans to attend law school in
the future.
Recalling her confrontation with her father, she said, “He had a look of
disgust on his face.” But she was determined.
“I told him, ‘I’m going to go to college and I’m going to get on with my
life,’” she recalled. “Thank God abortion was legal when it was.”
Timothy Williams reported from Montgomery, and Alan Blinder from Atlanta.
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