Alabama Politics in
Doc’s Political Parlor
& Home of Lawn Mower Repair

Here in Alabama, pious politicians want to make laws to display the Ten Commandments, allow prayer in school and teach creationism, while restricting or criminalizing abortion and failing to pass legislation to address hate.

Pending legislation (HB19) that has already passed the Alabama House seeks to impose additional criminal penalties if a pregnant woman is killed or is assaulted and miscarries as a result of the assault. The bill does so by defining a “person to include a fetus.”

Although supporters of this legislation point to exceptions in the bill regarding abortion, the underlying purpose is to ultimately criminalize abortion. The bill naturally begs the question: How is a fetus a “person” with rights in some instances, but not in others?

I agree with Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who has said that the recognition of fetal personhood “is to recognize that such a legal construct effectively removes pregnant women from the protections of the constitution and civil law.”

But a fetus is not a person until it is born. And, as Paltrow suggests, statutes that really do protect pregnant women can be drafted. Rather than creating independent fetal rights, a law enhancing the sentence of anyone who hurts or kills a woman who is pregnant at the time of the assault can be crafted. “This acknowledges the existence and value of the fetus, and the loss to the woman,” Paltrow argues.

Furthermore, as has happened in other states, HB19 also could be used to prosecute women who have chosen to carry a pregnancy to term, but who have directly or indirectly harmed the fetus by failing to properly care for themselves.

A woman is not an incubator, and a fetus should not have rights that trump those of the woman in whose uterus it resides.

Another bill, SB124, would include a fetus under existing laws pertaining to disposal or burial of a dead body. Women having abortions would have to sign papers that would be sent to the Health Department; this would constitute an invasion of privacy and a form of harassment and intimidation.

Yet another bill, HB250, has been introduced to require “any abortion be performed … only by a physician with admitting privileges to a hospital within the local service area” and that “anesthesia must be given by a licensed anesthesiologist or licensed certified nurse anesthetist.” In the rare case where a woman has a medical emergency as a result of an abortion, she can be treated in the emergency room of a hospital, and, if necessary, be admitted from there. Physicians who perform abortions are so few that most travel a circuit, going from clinic to clinic. This bill, with its needless red tape and financial burden, seeks to narrow the pool of available physicians who care for women and to place impossible financial constraints on clinics that provide abortion services.

The most recent horror to be introduced in the House is HB609, submitted by 30 lawmakers. This bill, called the “Health Care Rights of Conscience Act,” basically does away with a patient’s rights pertaining to a host of health-care services — including birth control and artificial insemination — and states that “any individual who may be asked to participate in any way in a health-care service” may decline such service with legal protection for such conduct. Further, “[a] health-care payer [i.e. insurance company] has the right to decline to pay” for any service or product “that violates its conscience.”

We must resist every attempt to restrict women’s right to reproductive choice. Women are one-half of humanity, yet male politicians, supported by clergy, continue to strive to keep women subservient, powerless and unequal. Already in Alabama we have allowed stealth attacks from our Legislature in the forms of the Parental Notification Act and the Women’s Right to Know Act. Both of these bills were drafted and pushed through by anti-choice forces.

We have to say no to further restrictions and abuses. There can be no compromise. We must fight every limitation that is put on a woman’s ability to control her own body.

Cheryl Sabel is acting president of the Montgomery chapter of the National Organization for Women. She can be reached at mgmalnow@knology.net