Last week, a new Alabama abortion law was enacted to ban abortions throughout the state, setting the stage for a national debate over a woman’s right to choose.
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Now that the predominately all-male, all-white, Republican-led Alabama Senate has voted nearly unanimously to ignore Roe v. Wade and replace it with their own Alabama abortion law to ban abortions statewide — even in cases of rape or incest — what’s next? By using their personal Christian beliefs as a guide, lawmakers opted to outlaw abortion at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure by threatening to charge abortion doctors with a felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison.
Is this real life??
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Last week, 25 GOP senators approved the stringent abortion bill. Then, Alabama’s female governor, Kay Ivey, signed the bill into law. Ironically, she tweeted that “every life is precious & that every life is a sacred gift from God,” then allowed a man on Alabama’s death row to be executed just a day later.
Now, Republicans across the country are being parodied for their alleged stance on protecting the life of a child at all costs with this new proposal: if it’s illegal for a woman to have an abortion, then it should be illegal for a man to masturbate.
For the past several days, the ignorance and insensitivity displayed by the authors of the new Alabama abortion law has given birth to protests from coast to coast. However, it was the words of an anonymous woman who put the thoughts and emotions of most Americans into perspective:
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I had an abortion one month after my 13th birthday. I’m not sure how else to write that sentence, but it’s not quite right to say I “had” an abortion. That implies I had choices. It’s more accurate to say it like this: my father, a doctor, raped me from when I was 8 years old to when I was 12 years old. When he got me pregnant at 12, he enlisted one of his colleagues to perform an abortion on me when I was 16 weeks pregnant. That was a whole different kind of violation on my body. I didn’t choose to be raped. I didn’t choose to be a mother or to have an abortion. All of my choices were made by my father and this other man, who was easily convinced that I was a slutty 12-year-old and he was my father’s savior from humiliation. I was just a thing that turned into a problem that had to be solved.
My father was a doctor. His buddy performed the abortion in his office, on a Sunday morning. Nobody was there. Because my father had money and access to abortion technology, my abortion would have happened whether it was legal or not, and nobody would have been prosecuted for it. But this is the most important point–this anti-abortion bullshit isn’t just a war on women. It’s quite specifically a war on poor women.
I can’t tell you what choice I would have made then, if I’d had a choice. I can tell you that I grieved that little soul, who the doctor held up for me to see, so I could “learn my lesson and never let this happen again.” And I can tell you that if I know anything about the universe, it’s this: Life finds a way.
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This anonymous woman perfectly summed up the feelings of most Americans toward the “one-size-fits-all” ban the Alabama abortion law introduced into existence. With the states of Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi and North Dakota attempting to follow in Alabama’s footsteps and pass similar abortion bans, some national Republicans are uncharacteristically calling for a pause.
Guy Benson, a Fox News contributor and the political editor of TownHall.com, tweeted that the Alabama bill went “too far” and was “far outside the mainstream” of public opinion.
Conservative televangelist Pat Roberts agreed, calling the Alabama abortion law “an extreme law” that “goes too far.”
“It’s an extreme law”: Pat Robertson says that Alabama’s anti-abortion law goes too far and will most likely lose at the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/lDuteweasq
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 15, 2019
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Even Donald Trump weighed in, suggesting that Alabama has gone too far.
As most people know, and for those who would like to know, I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions – Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother – the same position taken by Ronald Reagan. We have come very far in the last two years with 105 wonderful new…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2019
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Is the Alabama abortion law a war on women and the beginning of a national campaign to chip away at Roe v. Wade until a woman’s right to dictate the choices of her own body are nullified across the country? Since it has already been proven that abortion laws don’t stop abortions, is America on the path of returning to the practice of unsafe, back-alley procedures? Or, will the new Alabama law serve as a wake-up call to all of America that legislation against choice has no place in the 21st century?
“Elections have consequences” – Pres. Obama (in a closed-door meeting at the White House in 2009)
Thanks for covering this DJ. And what a story it is!
So I wonder just how many female Millennials and iGens (born in 1994 and later) are truly paying attention(?)..because frankly I find that many, if not most, members of those 2 generations take a heck of lot for granted. A heck of a lot…. especially females of voting age.
They tend to show very little (if any) appreciation for hard fought for Rights. And they treat those Rights as if they are entitlements. So are they beginning to understand what’s at stake NOW? Are they willing to step up NOW and very actively fight to retain this precious Right?
We shall see.