Top Alabama Democrat Blasts Abortion Law: ‘We Raped Women Last Night’

Appearing Wednesday on CNN’s New Day, Alabama State Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D) compared the State Senate’s passage of what could be the country’s strictest abortion law to the act of rape.

Lawmakers on Tuesday evening voted 25-6 to pass the bill, which criminalizes all abortions except for when the life of the mother is at risk. Under the law, doctors will face prison sentences ranging from 10- to-99-years who perform an abortion and up to 10 years in jail for doctors who try doing so.

As the Alabama Senate passed a near-total abortion ban, State Sen. Bobby Singleton says he spoke out against it because of his daughters.

If one of them had to look at a “rapist in the face for the rest of her life, I just couldn't take it as a father.” https://t.co/ZR3frk56wc pic.twitter.com/WXolM2zn6Q

— CNN (@CNN) May 15, 2019

A partial transcript is as follows:

ALISYN CAMEROTA: What do you think now the day after this has passed in the Alabama legislature?

STATE SEN. BOBBY SINGLETON: Oh, I think this is a horrible bill still. I think we raped women last night. We made women of Alabama the model of the new Roe v. Wade. I think that this is just a horrible bill. And hopefully that if it gets to that level, to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court would not select this as a test case.

CAMEROTA: Is that why your colleagues passed this? Do they really want to send doctors to prison for 99 years or are they hoping that this will to try to overturn Roe v. Wade?

SINGLETON: I would like to think it’s just for the purpose of Roe v. Wade. There are some members of that side of the aisle who really believe sincerely in this and I asked a sponsor that just last night: “Is that your intent to send doctors to jail for 99 years?”

…

I hate to think the fact that if someone would rape my daughter at 12 years old — because in the state of Alabama we had a test case where a 12-year-old was raped by her uncle — If I had to have that, that is just sad to tell my daughter that she had to carry that baby for nine months here in the state of Alabama and look that rapist in the face for the rest of her life. I just couldn’t take it as a father, so I had to speak up for women all over the country, for the women in the state of Alabama because this was just wrong.