Alabama Voices: Abortion ban was about politics, not saving babies

Amanda Reyes | Special to the Advertiser

We at Yellowhammer Fund are grateful for the court’s decision to delay the implementation of Alabama’s total abortion ban and that abortion will remain legal in the state until it winds its way through the courts.

Yet we also feel the need to address the obvious conclusion that the Legislature’s decision to end legal abortion access with absolutely no exceptions had little to do with their alleged desire to “save babies,” and was instead about political posturing. Suddenly state lawmakers who were once eager to make all abortion a felony are now content to wait a year or longer for the law to go into effect at all (and conveniently until many of them are no longer up for reelection).

This change of heart makes it clear their goal was to enjoy the benefits of being viewed as anti-abortion champions to their religious constituents without bearing any of the consequences that comes from that radical agenda being put into action.

At Yellowhammer Fund, we have seen first-hand how the most marginalized communities – especially people of color – will be affected when a total abortion ban is in place. To this day many pregnant clients believe that abortion is already illegal in the state, and that terminating a pregnancy could potentially put them in jail. Yet they are still desperate to get an abortion, proving that when a person is pregnant and does not want to be, they will continue to find a way to end it regardless of the consequences.

Unlike Alabama politicians, we are already coping with the harm caused by their extreme ban – even with the law currently blocked – just as we have being dealing with the repercussions of the escalating attacks that have diminished the number of abortion providers in the state, the time-frame in which a pregnant person can legally terminate, the expanding waiting periods and logistical roadblocks that have made abortion virtually inaccessible for many over the previous decade.

But the politicians of Alabama continue to show no concern for those who lack financial and medical resources and become pregnant, or how they are affected by showboat legislation meant to prove their devout Biblical ideals and so-called “family values.” Instead, they continue to use pregnant people as pawns in their political games by denying them access to terminations for unwanted pregnancies, the ability to obtain contraception to prevent pregnancy to begin with, necessary and life-saving prenatal and maternal care through Medicaid expansion or other medical assistance, and the threat of jail for those who struggle with addiction or are victims of violence or assault – or even simply suffer pregnancy loss due to inadequate resources like nutritious food, clean water or safe shelter.

By agreeing to allow a stay rather than continue to fight for the total ban they authored to be implemented, Alabama lawmakers now can say they did all they could to make abortion illegal without fear that the real effects of their work – people jailed for pregnancies that fail to result in viable births, doctors having their licenses stripped for the compassionate act of helping a patient end an unwanted pregnancy, even the potential for dangerous attempts at abortion in secret to avoid a possible prison sentence – swaying the public perception and endangering their chances for another term in office.

They got exactly what they hoped for in a path to the Supreme Court while reducing any concern that voters will hold them accountable for the harm they have done. Because at this moment that harm is mostly invisible except to communities already ignored by those who are in power – black, brown, undocumented and poor populations.

And sadly, we know that harm will continue unabated, regardless of whether this ban fully goes into effect or not.

Amanda Reyes is executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization in Alabama.