Editor\u2019s Note<\/strong>: \u00a0In the next few articles, we will provide background on the anti-choice legislation that are being passed and proposed so that everyone has some basic information on these laws, and we will report from reproductive justice activists on the impact of these bills, and explore with them the steps forward. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

[dropcap]T[\/dropcap]he current wave of anti-choice legislation, supported by Trump\u2019s dangerous rhetoric and his appointment of over 95 federal judges, has deep and lingering consequences that go beyond attempts to restrict bodies. The introduced and accepted legislation has serious consequences for access to medicine, voting rights, bodily autonomy and relief from trauma.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Alabama: HB 314: \u201cHuman Life Protection Act\u201d <\/b><\/h2>\n

Primary Sponsor:<\/b> Rep. Terri <\/span>Collins, 8th District<\/span><\/h4>\n

Impact:<\/strong> This bill, an attempt to regulate and remove bodily autonomy, leveraged calamitous historical events for political gain. HB 314 sets forth a comparison of abortion to the Holocaust, Soviet gulags, the Chinese \u201cGreat Leap Forward,\u201d Khmer Rouge\u2019s killings and the Rwandan genocide. It equates a developing, nonviable fetus with the death of millions of people <\/a>and crimes against humanity: \u201cBy 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.\u201d This language continues a pattern of the anti-choice movement of engaging in inciteful, emotionally charged language and rhetoric often laden with scientific and medical inaccuracies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HB 314\u2019s drafters deny the ability of an individual to receive an abortion despite claims that they are \u201c<\/span>suffering from an emotional condition or a mental illness which will cause [them] to <\/span>engage in conduct that intends to result in [their] death or the death of [their] unborn child<\/b>.\u201d The individual must receive permission from a second Alabama-licensed psychologist who finds that the individual suffers from a mental illness that may result in the death of the person before an abortion is allowed to be performed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Doctors who perform abortions will be charged with a Class A felony, a sentence that carries up to 99 years in prison and strips the individual of voting rights<\/a>. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alabama\u2019s law highlights that white women in <\/span>political leadership positions <\/span><\/a>are often just as eager to restrict bodily autonomy. Rep. Terri Collins, a woman, was the primary sponsor of the law. Gov. Kay Ivey, a woman, signed the ban. Rep. Collins herself claimed that this bill wasn\u2019t necessarily about promoting maternal health or decreasing costs; <\/span>she claimed i<\/span><\/a>t was about \u201cchallenging Roe v. Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn.\u201d Rep. Collins <\/span>explicitly refused to include an exception for rape or incest<\/b>, saying that <\/span>the lack of those exceptions was necessary in order to force federal courts to intervene<\/b><\/a>. \u00a0All of this, despite Alabama having one of the worst maternal and infant outcomes in the country. <\/span>Alabama\u2019s law has proven its legislators\u2019 pro-fetus stance, and has highlighted that abortion laws are not about maternal or infant health — it\u2019s about control over bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with Slate<\/a>, Yellowhammer Fund’s president, Amanda Reyes speaks to the immediate threat these abortion laws have on reproductive justice: “<\/span>People think abortion advocates are hysterical because we say we\u2019re getting closer to [undoing]\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>, but we are. What has happened in Alabama is showing how close we are.”<\/p>\n

The ban is set to take effect in six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alabama legislators have managed to use arguably the nation’s most inciteful, emotionally charged language to craft an ant-choice law that is additionally laden with scientific and medical inaccuracies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":5169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,36,16,6],"tags":[115,114,117,118],"yoast_head":"\n