Over the last few months, a handful of red states enacted laws restricting or outright banning access to legal abortions.
Between mid-March and early May, the governors of Georgia, Ohio, Utah and Mississippi signed bills banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected without any exceptions for cases of rape or incest, according to The New York Times. Other states have followed.
And then, on May 15, Alabama did what it tends to do — it out-conservative’d all four of those states and pretty much every other state in the country.
Gov. Kay Ivey (R-Ala.) signed what many are calling the most extreme restrictions on abortion ever enacted post-Roe. The bill, passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of the state legislature, outlaws abortion in every stage, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors who perform abortions will, when the bill takes effect, be committing a felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison — as good as a life sentence.
When these politicians claim to be “pro-life,” they’re trying to obscure the fact that they’re actually just anti-abortion. They don’t care about that child once the child is born. They’d like to see newborns and their families be denied public assistance and healthcare — two lifelines for actually keeping people alive.
Of course, when countered with these facts, they’ll do what any self-respecting politician does: they’ll dodge it. They’ll tell you that once you commit a heinous enough crime, your life is no longer as sacred as someone else’s. That “all” life really means whatever life they deem worthy of protecting.
That “all life” never really meant “all life” at all.
All of these politicians, as well as those who work to further their ideas, have something in common: none of them are actually pro-life. None of them actually care about “human life,” or “those who cannot protect themselves,” or “the innocent,” or the “sacred gift of life.”
A common theme among the politicians who pushed the bills to become laws is an overwhelming urge to protect who they claim are the most vulnerable among us.
“We will all answer to the good Lord one day,” Gov. Phil Bryant (R-Miss.) tweeted in response to threats of legal action from reproductive rights groups. “I will say in this instance, ‘I fought for the lives of innocent babies, even under threat of legal action.’”
“This legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,” Ivey told those gathered to watch her sign Alabama’s new law.
They are lying to you, and they have absolutely zero shame about it.
Take Mississippi, for example. The state ranks 50th — dead last — in healthcare, according to U.S. News & World Report. The maximum assistance a family of three can claim from the government is a whopping $170 a month, per state law. Bryant turned down Medicaid expansion, which would’ve insured thousands of Mississippians.
And, of course, Alabama. 46th in healthcare. A state that almost elected serial child predator Roy Moore as their Senator. And Ivey? 24 hours after she signed the abortion bill, Ivey signed a warrant to execute one of the state’s 191 death row inmates, the seventh such warrant she’s signed while in office.
So pro-life she’ll kill you.
There are so many other issues with anti-choice abortion bans. As conservatives always parrot when you suggest they try and protect life by making it harder for citizens to obtain firearms, bans don’t work — apparently unless you’re banning same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, immigration, and as Alabama tried to do, sex toys and pornography.
And then, there’s that truism we all must remember when fighting for reproductive rights: if it’s not your body, it’s not your decision to make. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. You, as a person, have the right to bodily autonomy. A right that far trumps almost every other right.
And yet that needful fact is completely lost to so many.
