Alabama Bill Would Make Most Abortions Illegal

A bill introduced Tuesday in the Alabama State House would ban all abortions at any stage of pregnancy, except if the mother’s health is in danger.

HB 314, dubbed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, is sponsored by Republican state Rep. Terri Collins and would “make abortion a Class A felony and attempted abortion a Class C felony.”

“It simply criminalizes abortion,” said Collins, according to the Associated Press. “Hopefully, it takes it all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn (Roe versus Wade.)”

The text of the measure further states:

This bill would make abortion and attempted abortion felony offenses except in cases where abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.

This bill would provide that a woman who receives an abortion will not be held criminally culpable or civilly liable for receiving the abortion.

The legislation demonstrates the number of unborn babies aborted in the United States compared to other world human rights atrocities:

It is estimated that 6,000,000 Jewish people were murdered in German concentration camps during World War II; 3,000,000 people were executed by Joseph Stalin’s regime in Soviet gulags; 2,500,000 people were murdered during the Chinese “Great Leap Forward” in 1958; 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s; and approximately 1,000,000 people were murdered during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. All of these are widely acknowledged to have been crimes against humanity. By comparison, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.

The bill is introduced in the wake of abortion bans approved in Kentucky and Mississippi once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Georgia’s fetal heartbeat abortion ban is also awaiting the signature of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who said he intends to sign it into law.

Planned Parenthood Southeast CEO Staci Fox referred to the bill as a “death sentence for women across this state.”

“These bans are blatantly unconstitutional and lawmakers know it — they just don’t care,” she said. “Alabamians are just pawns in this political game to challenge access to safe, legal abortion nationally.”

🚨⚠️🚨 Two outright abortion bans, House Bill 314 and Senate Bill 211, were just introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives. These bills would ban all abortion in the state, even in cases of rape and incest. pic.twitter.com/MDTNdv2KGB

— Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates (@PPSE_Advocates) April 2, 2019

Collins, however, said she is not concerned her bill conflicts with precedent set by the Supreme Court, which invented a right to abortion in 1973.

The “whole point is to get the courts to relook at this issue,” she said. “I think people are seeing a possibility that the Supreme Court might have a more conservative-leaning balance.”