Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed an abortion bill Wednesday that would be blatantly unconstitutional if the conservative movement had not recently seized control of the Supreme Court. Now it's anyone's guess, and the bill's sponsor was explicit in saying it was designed to get Roe v. Wade overturned. The bill outlaws basically all abortions in the state, and doctors who perform one could face up to 99 years of prison time unless the mother's health is at risk. There is no exception for rape or incest, meaning a teenager could be forced to endure the incomprehensible cruelty of having to carry her rapist's baby to term. The penalty, in terms of prison time, for a doctor who spares a young woman of this grotesque and life-defining misery could be the same as that faced by her rapist under Alabama law: 10 to 99 years.

In signing the bill, Ivey had this to say.

Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act. To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious & that every life is a sacred gift from God.

It's telling that the governor felt it necessary to say the bill has many supporters in her signing statement. In fact, a full ban on abortion does not enjoy the support of even 25 percent of the population in any state in America, including Alabama. 77 percent of Americans believe there should be exceptions in cases of rape or incest. (This is still disgustingly low.) This is a bill for movement conservative extremists and no one else.

You'll be shocked to learn that Ivey's signature is the first time a woman was involved in this law for a while: it passed the Alabama Senate thanks to the votes of 25 white men. There are just three women in the Senate, and women fill just 15 percent of the seats in the state legislature despite making up 51 percent of the population. In the last 200 years, a grand total of nine women have served in the Alabama Senate.

Ivey signs the bill into law. Hal Yeager/AP/REX/Shutterstock

But the real peach there is towards the end: every life is precious, and every life is a gift from God. That sounds nice, but it is not reflected in basically anything else Alabama does. The state ranks 49th nationally in terms of life expectancy: residents' lives are 3.5 years shorter than the national average. Alabama has the fourth-worst infant mortality rate in America, at 7.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. That makes a baby born in Alabama more likely to die than one that's born in Russia, or Qatar, or the Cayman Islands. (In fairness, the United States' overall record on this is abysmal: in the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world, 5.8 of every 1,000 infants born alive will soon die.) Life might be precious in the womb, but Alabama has not devoted much time or energy to protecting it once it's out in the world.

This extends elsewhere. Alabama had near-zero regulations on childcare services up until last year, when Ivey signed a "compromise" bill that, according to AL.com, "adds some regulations for child care centers but stops short of requiring licensing and inspection of all centers." The state still allows "church-affiliated" childcare centers to claim exemption from licensing and inspection requirements, because what could go wrong? Nearly half of the state's 1,900 care centers claim the exemption. Opponents of regulating church-affiliated outfits said it would "infringe on religious freedoms." The move was prompted by a series of child injuries and deaths at unlicensed centers, including a 5-year-old boy in Mobile who was left in a day care van by a driver who had a criminal record.

Alabama also isn't known for affordable childcare, and while married couples were paying about 7 percent of median income towards it, single mothers were paying 30 percent. This is a crippling expense considering experts recommend spending 10 percent or less. Maybe the Alabama legislature could devote some time and energy to any of these issues. In a recent U.S. News and World Report survey, Alabama ranked 49th out of 50 in terms of overall outcomes for its citizens. It was 46th in healthcare, 50th in education, 45th on the economy, 45th in "opportunity," and 45th in crime and corrections.

A protester in a Handmaid’s Tale costume stands outside the Alabama State House. The Washington Post Getty Images

In fact, Alabama has one of the most barbaric prison systems in the country: a Trump Justice Department investigation found the facilities were overcrowded (at 180 percent of capacity), understaffed, and had some of the highest rates of rape and homicide. In one week in one Alabama prison in September 2017, there were four stabbings, five beatings, three sexual assaults, an overdose, and an arson where a prisoner's bed was set on fire while he slept. In a separate case from another institution, a prisoner had been dead for so long that by the time guards found him lying face down, his face was flattened. Is this how you treat children of God, whose lives are sacred?

The folks who passed this bill are also the same people who want to cut the SNAP program—also known as food stamps—which helps feed one in four children in the United States. 44 percent of food stamp recipients are children, and 21 percent are their parents. They also want to cut or impose work requirements on Medicaid, which helps the neediest people in our society get medical care—many of whom are children. It's not about the sanctity of life, because once you're out of that womb, they don't care. You're born? Fuck you. Good luck. Nobody said it better than George Carlin.

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It's also not about preventing abortions. These are the same folks who want to roll back affordable access to contraception, the number-one way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and abortions. Many religious conservatives advocate for abstinence-only sex education, which operates on the very sound premise that if you tell teens not to do something, they won't do it. All the while, you're shirking your responsibility to give young people the knowledge and skills to navigate the actual situations they're likely to face. If abortion is an abomination before God, Republicans should be working overtime to make sure every teenager has access to condoms and knows how to put one on—not pretending that no one is going to have sex. Of course, an abortion ban follows the same logic. American history shows that rich women will still get the procedure safely, and poor women will turn to more dangerous solutions.

No, the point of all this is to strike a blow for the reactionary traditionalism that has animated movement conservatism over the last few decades. Quite simply, the White Evangelical Christians who dominate the Republican base are of the opinion that the correct American social order consists of the racial and gender hierarchy of approximately 1956. Banning abortion is about controlling sexual freedom, sure, but it's also about limiting the autonomy of women in our society and enforcing rigid gender roles. If a woman gets pregnant on the younger side and has no choice but to give birth, her opportunities to succeed in her career are significantly limited. Every task becomes more burdensome. Maybe she'll just get married and stay home.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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