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The Guardian

Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passed a bill to outlaw abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy.
The strictest-in-the-nation abortion ban allows an exception only when the woman’s health is at serious risk, and sets up a legal battle that supporters hope will lead to the Supreme Court overturning its landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide.
The measure contains no exception for rape and incest, after lawmakers voted down an amendment Tuesday that would have added such an exception.
The legislation makes it a class A felony for a doctor to perform an abortion, punishable by 10 to 99 years in prison.
Women would not face criminal penalties for getting an abortion.
It goes further than any other state has to restrict abortion. Other states, including neighbouring Georgia, have instituted bans on abortion after about six weeks into pregnancy.
The vote came after a battle broke out over whether to allow legal abortions for women who become pregnant due to rape or incest, an issue that divided Republicans who otherwise supported outlawing abortion.

Last week, chaos erupted on the floor when Republican leaders stripped out the rape exception without a roll-call vote, leading the final vote to be postponed. It got a full vote on Tuesday, but ultimately failed.
Lawmakers approved the measure after an hours-long debate, where minority Democrats introduced a slew of amendments in an attempt to block it.
“You don’t have to raise that child. You don’t have to carry that child. You don’t have to provide for that child. You don’t have to do anything for that child, but yet you want to make the decision for that woman,” the state senator Vivian Davis Figures told the bill’s proponents.
She introduced amendments that would require the state to expand Medicaid, force legislators who vote for the measure to pay the state’s legal bills, or make it a crime for men to get vasectomies. All failed.
Controversial ‘heartbeat’ laws could ban most abortions across the US Deep South
Figures questioned the backers’ resistance to adding an exception for rape and incest.
“Do you know what it’s like to be raped?” she said.
“Why would you not want a woman to at least have that exception for such a horrific act?”
The bill has already passed the House. It must now be signed by Governor Kay Ivey.
The legislation is expected to spark an immediate legal challenge and to be overturned at least by the lower courts. The ACLU has said it will sue to stop it.
Backers of the ban are hoping the fight will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the 1973 Roe v Wade case that women must be allowed to get abortions up to the point where the fetus can survive outside the womb.
“Human life has rights, and when someone takes those rights, that’s when we as government have to step in,” said the state senator Clyde Chambliss.
‘Law limits women’s rights’: South Korea’s constitutional court strikes down abortion ban in landmark ruling
“When God creates that life, that miracle of life inside the woman’s womb, it’s not our place as humans to extinguish that life. That’s what I believe.”
The bill is part of a trend across the US in which Republican-controlled states are attempting to put new restrictions on abortion, gambling that they will fare better in the courts following the confirmation of new federal judges and Supreme Court justices picked by the Trump administration.
Opponents predict the legislation will drive doctors to leave Alabama, which already has some of the highest rates of infant mortality and cervical cancer.
Additional reporting by The Washington Post


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United States

Alabama senate bans nearly all abortions, makes no exceptions for rape victims

Medical images collage of ultrasound during woman pregnancy showing fetus in third month

Bianca Cameron-Schwiesow, from left,Kari Crowe and Margeaux Hardline, dressed as handmaids, take part in a protest against HB314, the abortion ban bill, at the Alabama State House in Montgomery, Ala., on Wednesday April 17, 2019. (Mickey Welsh/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP)

Pro-choice supporters protest in front of the Alabama State House. Photo: Reuters

Controversial ‘heartbeat’ laws could ban most abortions across the US Deep South

April Houston and Lara Martin hold signs while dressed as Handmaids in protest of Georgia's anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. Photo: Reuters

Ashley Garecht speaks as anti-abortion protesters rally near a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia, Friday, May 10, 2019. The demonstration was spurred by the actions of a Democratic state lawmaker who recorded himself berating an anti-abortion demonstrator at length outside the clinic. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - In this March 20, 2018, file photo, anti-abortion sidewalk counselors call out to a woman entering the Jackson Women's Health Organization's clinic, the only facility in the state that performs abortions, in Jackson, Miss. A new Mississippi law could make it nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there if it survives a court challenge. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Anti-abortion protesters rally near a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia, Friday, May 10, 2019. The demonstration was spurred by the actions of a Democratic state lawmaker who recorded himself berating an anti-abortion demonstrator at length outside the clinic. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

FILE - In this May 7, 2019, file photo, Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, center, signs legislation in Atlanta, banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks before many women know they're pregnant. Georgia became the fourth state to enact the ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. (Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)

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Law bans abortion except if there is a ‘serious health risk’ to the mother, with no exceptions for rape and incest
Those performing abortions would be committing a felony, punishable by 10 to 99 years in prison


Law bans abortion except if there is a ‘serious health risk’ to the mother, with no exceptions for rape and incest.


US Politics

Reproductive health