Exceptions For Rape And Incest Need To Be Added To The New Abortion Law

I did not realize during the last election that we were electing legislators to try and overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Just like most Alabamians and all Christians, I would say I am pro-life. Some people say it because they sincerely are, and others because they feel they have no choice.

When Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, it ruled that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment gave women the right to privacy. It is up to each individual woman what she chooses to do with her body. Nobody has to agree with her. It is her choice…and if you want to believe it will also be her sin and that she alone will one day have to give her account to our merciful God – as we will each have the opportunity to do – then so be it. You can judge her, but you get no say in her decision.

Alabama is being plastered all over the national news again because of this new abortion law. It is the strictest in the nation. It was signed into law by a governor who has never carried, delivered, or raised a child. And I take it Kay Ivey hasn’t had a recent pregnancy scare. Even President Trump agrees the abortion law goes too far. The law will likely never be enforced, but it makes us look backwards to the rest of the country. It would give doctors who perform abortions stronger sentences than rapists receive.

This uprising and renewed interest in overruling Roe vs. Wade is partly in response to a few other states passing laws allowing full-term abortions. Strongly disagreeing with that practice doesn’t change the fact that biologically there is a time between a zygote becoming an embryo and an embryo developing into a fetus than will grow into a baby.

The proud sponsor of the bill, Senator Terri Collins – a Republican from Decatur – has been honest about her intention. She admits the bill was worded the way it was because it was meant to be a threat to Roe Vs. Wade – and if exceptions for rape and incest had been added it would have contradicted the personhood status. The purpose of passing such an extreme bill was to force a legal case that would cause the Supreme Court to review Roe vs. Wade.

Passing this law had nothing to do with what is in the best interest of the women of Alabama. It was not about what the voters of Alabama felt was important and should be addressed. This bill was conceived through Terri Collins’s philosophy. This is her baby so to speak. And the rest of the lawmakers – the vast majority of whom are men – went along with it. Rather than passing laws that will benefit this state that is too often first at everything last – they have instead set out to change the law of the land for all women.

Simultaneously with this abortion law passing last week, the city of Selma received a million dollars in grant money to help fight gang violence and crime. The federal government awarded the state $400,000 to fight the opioid abuse in rural areas.

Rape happens every day in Alabama. There are women in our state without homes who use their bodies to feed addictions.

There is also an active campaign within the state attempting to reach women who are victims of sex trafficking.

Not having exceptions for rape and incest in the new abortion law uses the least of us as pawns, and it will never earn anyone a jewel in their crown.