Prohibition of Abortion: Alabama and Georgia Bills Explained

Abortion legislation in Georgia and Alabama entered the news cycle this week. The governor of Georgia enacted a heart rate bill on Tuesday and the Alabama Senate has postponed its vote on an almost total ban on abortion until next week.

Georgian law will ban abortions after a doctor is able to detect "a fetal heart rate in the womb", usually around six weeks, before many women realize that they are speakers. It was one of the country's toughest proposals until the total ban in Alabama.

Under the proposed Alabama bill, physicians would no longer be able to perform the procedure once the fetus is "in utero". This version attracted national attention because the bill passed in the House allowed for a single exception, in cases presenting a serious risk to health "To the mother of the unborn child". Cases of rape and incest were not exempted as they are in other states.

Abortion bills are not simple.

"In Georgia, you have to go into a rabbit hole and be a lawyer to understand what you are reading," said Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, director of Planned Parenthood's media campaigns.

Since Tuesday, fear has spread, confusing the next reports on the bills. The information was misinterpreted, criminal sanctions were poorly explained and social media platforms turned into a first territory of false stories.

And while the issue of bans on early abortion has received a lot of attention, women who miscarry will not be sentenced to life in prison.

So let's correct the record.

Abortion is not forbidden right now.

Neither Alabama's proposed ban nor Georgia's abortion law is currently in effect.

Georgian law is expected to become enforceable in 2020, but "everyone in America expects it to be challenged in court," said Mary Ziegler, professor at the Florida State Law School. University and author of "After Roe: The Lost History of the Debate on Abortion." "" The courts can prevent its application even in 2020. "

The bill introduced in Alabama was tabled Thursday; because it has not been adopted, there is nothing to apply. Other states, including Mississippi and Ohio, have recently passed "heartbeat" laws. The law of both states is currently in force.

[Graphic: Which states are blocking abortion — and which are enacting protections?]

State Representative Terri Collins (R), who sponsored the Alabama bill, reiterated in an interview Friday with The Post that abortions are currently allowed in the United States. # 39; State. The bill must go through the Senate and the governor must then sign it. It will take another six months to come into force.

Several states have enacted an abortion law, but any law passed by the courts has finally been blocked or overturned, Zeigler said. Iowa, North Dakota and Kentucky have seen related laws blocked.

"Panicked women need to know that they have the time," said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, and patients should not cancel their appointments.

Kolbi-Molinas was also convinced that the ACLU "could override these laws because they violate decades of Supreme Court laws."

"We have been inundated with calls from patients who think abortions are already illegal," said Staci Fox, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast. "They do not understand that we are going to challenge this in court and that it will probably be blocked."

But what worries her the most is the patients who do not call. They need to know that "compassionate and non-judgmental care is always legal".

[Opinion: Republicans have stopped pretending on abortion]

Women in Alabama and Georgia will not be criminalized

Unlike other states – which have limited abortion bills, such as bans on types of abortion procedures and gestational age of the fetus – Alabama's proposed legislation is a total prohibition of abortion.

"This bill is very simple," Collins said. "It's not a matter of birth control or the day after the pill. This is not to allow abortion once the woman is pregnant. The entire bill has been designed to reverse [Roe v. Wade] and allow states to decide what is best for them. "

However, the bill explicitly states that women are exempt from criminal and civil liability, a principle that lawmakers in Alabama have repeatedly reinforced.

"In my bill, women would in no way be liable to a term of imprisonment if they were having an abortion," Collins said. Instead, the law targets doctors, who can be prosecuted for practicing an abortion, a crime punishable by 99 years of imprisonment.

Carol Sanger, a professor at Columbia Law School, said such penalties for doctors were "just another way to make women scared" and create "more deterrence for doctors and doctors." residents to adopt this practice.

Georgian law is more complex.

As in Alabama, it is explicitly stated that doctors who perform abortions will be prosecuted. It is clear about these penalties. The bill is more vague as to the prosecution (or non-prosecution) of women.

On Tuesday, Slate published an article with a title not quite accurate: "Georgia has just criminalized abortion. Women who terminate their pregnancies would be sentenced to life imprisonment. "

Under Georgian law, women who terminated their pregnancy would be prosecuted and sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment.

It's wrong.

"News headlines and social media speculating on unintended consequences of bills are, at the very least, not productive. At most, they are harmful, "said Staci Fox of Planned Parenthood at The Post on Friday.

HB 481 could not be used to successfully pursue women, she explained. But if a woman has a miscarriage, she can be dragged into an investigation to determine if anyone has practiced an illegal abortion.

"You do not want a woman to be forced to prove that she lost her baby," Sanger said.

Georgian law does not unequivocally say that women are exempt, but legal experts point to other areas of the Georgian Penal Code that provide for specific defenses for women, including those with miscarriages.

The goal is a challenge Roe v. Wade

In Roe v. Wadethe Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy and liberty was sufficiently broad to allow a woman to continue her pregnancy by consulting her doctor.

"In addition to giving women the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, the court also stated that this right was not absolute and that there were rules governing the duration of this right," said Sanger. To do this, we need to consider quarters and viability, ignoring why a woman chose to have an abortion.

The recent wave of abortion bills that attempt to ban abortions early in pregnancy puts the spotlight on duration – some states have chosen 16 weeks, as well as the last few weeks. others (like Georgia) are only six. Alabama has gone one step further. Under the new legislation, the state said that all it needed was a pregnancy.

"By making the fetus a person, it's an end in itself. roe, "she says." Once you've determined that a fetus is a person, you can not kill anymore. "

For Collins, the representative of the state of Alabama, the true purpose of the law is to trigger a dispute that would force the US Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade.

[At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.]

"My argument about retaining an amendment concerning rape or incest in this bill is as follows: Roe v. Wade does not mention this issue and I want this bill to focus on the reasoning used in the Roe v. Wade "Is the baby in the belly of the mother a person?" Any amendment would contradict that point. "

Even in Alabama, it seems, one still wonders why a woman should be able to have an abortion.

"That's what Roe stands for – no one should be able to decide why a woman should have an abortion," said Sanger.

The Supreme Court decides what cases it wants to hear and legal experts believe that there are certain things that suggest that the court would not take one of the cases of banning the duration of the pregnancy.

Judges prefer to take cases that are disputed in jurisdictions across the country, according to Sanger. They want uniformity across states and, as no state has met the requirements of duration, there has not yet been a split circuit.

The legal and political anti-abortion community seems confident of having the voices to cancel roe.

"They say," We challenge you to sue us because we think we will win, "Collins said, but there are rules governing when the Supreme Court should reverse a case.

According to a doctrine known as stare decisis, judges are bound by jurisprudence. They can not cancel a case simply because new judges have joined the court.

Sanger explained, "We want the law to be more sustainable, we want it to be more stable and it does not change when a new administration comes in."

Read more:

A sponsor of an abortion bill in Ohio thinks that one can re-implant ectopic pregnancies. You can not

Governor of Georgia signs 'Heart Rhythm Bill', one of the country's most restrictive abortion laws

Alabama Senate postpones vote on country's toughest abortion bill