The Alabama law is likely to be challenged in court.
Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama on Wednesday signed into law a bill banning almost all abortions in the state, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
Under the law, which is scheduled to take effect in six months, an abortion is only legal if the pregnant person’s life is at risk. A doctor who performs an abortion for any other reason could face up to 99 years in prison. Some say doctors will be too worried about criminal penalties to perform abortions even under those circumstances.
“It’ll be the most restrictive and extreme abortion ban in the country,” Monica Edwards, an Alabama native and fellow with the group Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, told Vox.
The law is likely to be challenged in court before it can take effect. In fact, that’s the goalof those pushing the legislation. This particular law is part of a larger nationwide shift in abortion politics. With President Trump in the White House and Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, state legislators are passing stricter and stricter anti-abortion laws in an effort to get the Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. And while abortion opponents once favored an incremental approach to restricting abortion, many have adopted a far more aggressive strategy in hopes of rolling back protections for abortion nationwide.
The Alabama bill has been a lightning rod for national controversy from day one.
When the bill was first floated in March, Eric Johnston, an attorney with the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition who helped draft the bill, seemed to be pushing bizarre theories about human reproduction,saying that “a man and woman can have sex and you can take her straight into a clinic and determine an egg and sperm came together.” In fact, the most sensitive tests cannot detect a pregnancy until about a week after fertilization.
His comments werewidely criticized. “Maybe not everyone learns the mechanics of early pregnancy in ninth-grade biology class,” wrote Lauren Kelley at the New York Times. “But it’s reasonable to expect that someone trying to legislate what pregnant people can do with their bodies would have a better grasp on the matter.
