The legislature is claiming new clinic rules are for women's safety. But the governor will close the clinics for God.

Governor Robert Bentley.

Sutherland Boswell / Wikimedia Commons

Clinics providing safe abortion care in Alabama may be in danger of closing if the latest TRAP bill goes into effect, forcing them to undertake extensive construction and requiring all doctors to have local hospital admitting privileges. Bill sponsor Mary Sue McClurkin was adamant that the bill was about women’s safety, not about closing clinics, and that if the law passed it wouldn’t do a thing to stop abortions, saying “I wish, but it won’t.”

Someone must have forgotten to pass that message on to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. Speaking at an anti-choice rally, he told the attendees he couldn’t wait to sign the bill into law. “We need to remember we are dealing with human life and this is what God expects us to do,” Governor Bentley declared, according to the Associated Press. “I can assure you, if it comes to me, I will sign it.”

If only God could nudge Alabama’s anti-choice politicians into putting a little more effort into laws that actually benefit some of the “human life” that are living, breathing residents of the state. But I guess S/He doesn’t expect much in that arena.