Sixteen years ago, Gene Church, a new father and a grieving husband, went to Montgomery with a baby in his arms and a bill in his pocket.

The year before, his wife Rose had died of complications from childbirth - complications doctors should have caught - and Church wanted to make sure that sort of mistake wouldn't happen again.

A simple blood test should have uncovered the problems his wife was having, Church said in an interview Monday, but insurance companies and the healthcare industry as a whole were pushing by whatever means possible to keep costs low and profits high. If the hospital didn't run the blood test, then there was no risk that they'd discover complications that would necessitate a longer stay in the hospital.

The test cost less than $5.

But Rose didn't receive one, and 36 hours after arriving at Helen Keller Hospital, her doctor signed off on her discharge. Eight days later, she died.

Church drafted the bill himself. It reinforced a federal law that guaranteed minimum coverage for new mothers and it mandated a basic level of treatment, including the blood test that might have saved his wife's life.

When he got to Montgomery he found a political divide that was just as acrimonious as it is today, if not more so. Don Siegelman had just taken back the governor's mansion for the Democrats, and Steve Windom had just become the first Republican lieutenant governor since Reconstruction. Democrats tried to strip Windom of his powers, leading to a filibuster in which Windom peed in a jug behind the state Senate dais before giving up control of the upper house.

"It was in that environment that I was trying to get this bill passed, so I was told that there was zero chance of getting it passed," he recalled this week.

He was told he had zero chance, but the bill passed both houses of the Alabama Legislature unanimously. With the governor's signature, "Rose's Law" was written into the Alabama Code (Section 27-48-2, if you want to look it up).

Church had also filed a lawsuit against the hospital and his late wife's OB-GYN, Dr. Larry Stutts.

That lawsuit lingered in the courts until it was eventually settled in 2005. As part of the settlement, the terms were undisclosed and Church says he agreed to a confidentiality agreement.

Church then moved on with his life and put that chapter behind him, or so he thought.

Fast forward 16 years

Church remarried and moved to Pensacola, Fla. Today he works with his brother, who manages a chain of retirement homes, but he says he spends most of his time running a nonprofit network of Catholic radio stations.

Then, last week, a family member of Rose sent his daughter, Logan, a text asking whether they had seen a bill in the Alabama Legislature to repeal Rose's law.

The bill's sponsor was state Sen. Larry Stutts - Rose's OB-GYN, who had approved her discharge from the hospital in 1998.

"My daughter didn't even know who Larry Stutts was," Church said. "I had to explain it to her while I was frantically trying to research this bill online."

Church said he had vaguely remembered hearing that state Sen. Roger Bedford had lost his reelection bid last year, but he had not known it was Stutts who had beaten him.

Even if he had known, he said that it would not have bothered him much. He has tried to let any grudges go. He recounted how, before Rose's funeral, Stutts had come to the funeral home, where he tried to shake Church's hand, but Church refused.

"The truth was, I was wrong about that," Church said Thursday. "I was hurting."

However, he says he's struck by what Stutts has now tried to do as a freshman state Senator.

"It was like he had to bury this law so that no one would ever know, and no one would have known had he left this alone," Church said. "Now he comes across as a very petty and vindictive man."

Church said that he has had conversations with other lawmakers, including some of the bill's cosponsors in the Senate, and he doesn't believe they knew what the bill did when they were asked to support it. They took the advice of a medical professional, but now that has backfired on them.

"Lawmakers I've talked to have been solidly on my side," Church said. "There is a tendency to look at this and think that it is a Republican versus Democrat or male versus female issue, but I like to remind people that when Rose's Law passed, it passed unanimously."

It's important to understand, too, that Stutts' bill would not repeal only Rose's Law, but also a bill passed in 2013 that would require physicians notify women who have been found to have dense breast tissue, which can mean an increased risk of breast cancer. Curiously, that 2013 law was sponsored by then-Sen. Bedford, who Stutts defeated.

On Monday morning, I left a message at Stutts' office seeking his side of the story, as did one of my colleagues. As of Tuesday morning, he had not returned those calls. However, last week he told WAFF that his bill would repeal "emotional legislation that doesn't improve care."

At least one of the new bill's cosponsors, state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, says he didn't know about Stutts' connection to the law's history and that Stutts did not tell him and the other cosponsors about that history when he asked for their support.

"It hasn't gone anywhere yet, and it's probably going to be one of those bills that doesn't go anywhere," he said.

Church said that when his daughter Logan learned what was happening, she was ready to go to Montgomery to set lawmakers straight, but now it looks like that won't be necessary.

"The truth is unchanged since where it was 16 years ago," Church said. "I'm just asking people to do the right thing, and no matter people's political persuasion then, they did the right thing. Sadly there's now an individual involved who didn't want to do the right thing."