Touching off a national controversy, Alabama passed the most severe anti-abortion law since the US Supreme Court ruled in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to procure an abortion. The Alabama law makes no exemption for cases of rape or incest and threatens to impose a prison sentence of up to 99 years on any doctor who performs the procedure.
"From conception to natural death, every single human life deserves to be protected by law. The violence of abortion is never the answer to the violence of rape," said Catherine Glenn Foster, president of Americans United for Life.
The bill’s sponsors expect it to be challenged in the courts and hope it will serve as a vehicle for the US Supreme Court to overturn their 1973 decision. "It is clearer than ever that Roe is far from being settled law in the eyes and hearts of the American people, and this is increasingly reflected in state legislatures," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organisation that advocates against abortion.
Archbishop Thomas Rodi of Mobile, Alabama praised the new law in an interview on Relevant Radio. “Life is worth protecting,” he said. ”Any life is worth protecting. And the bill makes that clear. Human life is to be honoured and respected.” He noted that Catholics only account for four per cent of the state’s population and that the effort to enact the law was broad-based.
Other pro-life leaders, however, expressed concerns about the new law. “I think Alabama has gone too far,” said Televangelist Pat Robertson. “They want to challenge Roe v. Wade but my humble view is that this is not the case that we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose.”
Presidential candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who supports abortion rights, said that efforts to restrict abortion violated the Christian faith as she understood it. “If you are a person of the Christian faith, one of the tenets of our faith is free will,” Gillibrand said at a press conference. “One of the tenets of our democracy is that we have a separation of church and state, and under no circumstances are we supposed to be imposing our faith on other people. And I think this is an example of that effort,” CBS quoted her as saying at a press conference.”
On Saturday night President Donald Trump tweeted that Republicans needed to unite on the abortion issue. “I am strongly pro-life, with the three exceptions – rape, incest and protecting life for the mother,” he said.
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