Celebrated as one of America’s most pro-life laws, the Human Life Protection Act, was signed into law by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey on the 15th of May 2019 . The Bill which renders abortion and attempted abortion a felony in the state of Alabama, except when the health of the mother is at serious risk, is a clear recognition of the presence and dignity of unborn life.
Despite the new law’s efforts to promote the equal right to life for all humans, pro-abortion activists have made attempts to storm social media with misinformation and deceit regarding the Act’s regulations. So, lets address some of the fraudulent facts that are being circulated.
Myth: Women who miscarry will face punishment.
Busted: A miscarriage is not an abortion. A miscarriage occurs naturally. Abortion is the pre-meditated and intentional killing of an unborn human. The Bill clearly defines abortion as ‘The use or prescription of instrument, medicine, drug or any other substance or device with the intent to terminate the pregnancy, with the knowledge that the termination will with reasonable likelihood cause death of the unborn child."
The Bill states that abortion does NOT include; removing the dead unborn child, removing an unborn child prematurely to avoid health risk to the mother or a procedure to terminate the pregnancy of a woman with ectopic pregnancy.
Myth: Women will be criminally prosecuted for abortion.
Busted: Women will face no punishment for undergoing an abortion or attempting to procure an abortion. The Bill states clearly that women will NOT be held criminally liable, instead only a doctor found to be conducting an abortion could be held criminally liable.
The Bill states: "A woman who receives an abortion will not be held criminally culpable or civilly liable for receiving the abortion… No woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed shall be criminally or civilly liable."
Myth: Doctors will face 99 years in prison for performing abortions.
Busted: The state of Alabama organises felonies into three sections, Class A, Class B and Class C. Every felony committed in Alabama is punishable by at-least one year in prison with time sentence dependant on the class of felony which has been committed.
Class A- No less than ten years, no more than 99 years.
Class B- No less than two years, no more than 20 years.
Class C- No less than one year and one day, no more than ten years.
Section 7 of the Bill states however that: "This act shall not apply to a physician performing a termination of pregnancy or assisting in performing a termination of pregnancy due to a medical emergency."
Myth: The law was passed exclusively by men.
Busted: The Bill was sponsored by female lawmaker, Terri Collins and was signed into law by female Governor Kay Ivey. Norma McCorvey, more often referred to a Jane Roe, who was the plaintiff in the landmark case Roe v Wade, which secured the right to abortion, even turned into a pro-life advocate, as she spent the remainder of her life attempting to reverse the abortion law that she advocated for. Those who signed Roe V Wade into law however, were all male.
Myth: Women will turn to and die from back-alley abortion.
Busted: The notion of back-alley abortion death has been exposed repeatedly over the decades to have been widely - exaggerated. It was emotively used as a tactic to gain sympathy for widespread abortion. Very few women were dying before the abortion law was liberalised and maternal deaths continued to steadily decline before, during and after legalised abortion came into force - there was no sudden marked decline. This steady decrease was actually due to the more widespread availability and enhancement of anti-biotics, not abortion law.
Statistics surrounding the ‘back-alley’ argument additionally have no solid historical basis. In America, Dr Bernard Nathanson who co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), helped disseminate the claim that 10,000 women were dying each year from illegal abortion. Before his death in 2011, Dr Nathanson admitted that such figures had been entirely fabricated for the purpose of public relations. Dr Nathanson said: "In NARAL we generally emphasised the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always 5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year. I confess that I knew the figures were totally false and I suppose the others did too… We fed the public a line of deceit, dishonesty, a fabrication of statistics and figures. We sensationalised the effects of illegal abortions and fabricated polls. We unashamedly lied."
Pro-abortion scare - mongering has been in over drive over the past week to suppress the pro-life message. But let’s be honest, facts matter, the truth is clear and the pro-life era is finally here.