NARAL Condemns Alabama’s Abortion Ban Following Passage of Extreme Legislation by Alabama Senate

The Alabama Senate voted today to pass a bill that is effectively a total ban on abortion, criminalizing abortion at any stage of pregnancy and threatening doctors with up to 99 years in prison for providing abortion care to their patients. In response, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue issued the following statement:

“Alabama just passed a law that is a total ban on abortion, criminalizing the act and punishing women and doctors. Anti-choice Republicans no longer even pretend to respect the law or the women that it protects. When this dangerous and demeaning law passed, Republicans stood up and applauded, while women wept. The Lt. Governor stated explicitly that this law is designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, as they capitalize on securing an anti-choice majority on the Supreme Court.

“When women stood up in record numbers to fight Kavanaugh’s nomination, propelled by his alarming record and Trump’s promise to nominate jurists committed to criminalizing abortion and punishing women, we were told we were ‘hysterical’ because Roe was settled law. Not six months later, we are battling measures where the stated goal is exactly that: outlawing abortion. It’s time to listen to women, not punish us for trying to make critical decisions about our own families and our own lives.”

The passage of Alabama’s ban on abortion is set against the backdrop of a string of extreme bans on abortion introduced, passed, or signed into law in over a dozen statehouses across the country this year alone. In Alabama, the bill’s sponsor made clear their aims, saying: “it’s very simple, it simply criminalizes abortion.”

The bill’s intent was always to punish women and restrict control over their own lives, bodies, and futures. This bill is so extreme that its drafters did not even include an exception to allow survivors of rape and incest to access abortion care.