Despite recent victories for abortion rights activists in seven states, Alabama is unlikely to change its effective abortion ban in the near future. (Getty Images)
When the Alabama Legislature approved a near-total abortion ban in 2019, some Republican members of the Legislature downplayed the impact of the legislation, saying it was meant as a challenge to Roe v. Wade and that the state would revisit the issue if Roe fell, possibly in a “heartbeat” bill that would ban the procedure at about six weeks after conception.
“I have prayed my way through this issue and this bill, because it was hard to give up heartbeat,” Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, said at the time. “I believe we can’t get a heartbeat bill until we get Roe v. Wade turned over.”
More than five years later, and over two-and-a-half years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal abortion rights protections, Alabama’s ban seems unlikely to change despite successes of abortion rights advocates in other parts of the country.
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Collins, who sponsored the legislation, said in a recent interview she had asked other lawmakers if they were interested in moving to a heartbeat bill, and she did not find that they did.
“Everyone was pleased with the bill that we had in place right now,” said Collins, who said she supports the current law.
In contrast, Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said that she worries about the health of women going forward. She said she would hate for a woman to die of a lack of medical care for a miscarriage.
“I would hate it if someone who has not supported this issues, whose daughter was a victim of incest, and at 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old, being forced in that young girl’s body to even risk her life at that, I would hate for that to happen,” she said.
Alabama has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, only allowing abortion if a woman’s life is threatened; if the fetus has a fatal anomaly that could result stillbirth or death shortly after birth, or if the woman has a mental illness that could threaten the life of the child. According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, only seven induced terminations of pregnancy were performed in the state in 2023.
Alabamians have traveled out of state to get abortions, even to states with restrictions. In 2022, 3,279 Alabamians had abortions in Georgia, according to data provided by the Georgia Department of Public Health. About 3,254 Alabamians did so in 2023. Through Sept. 30 of this year, 1,952 Alabama patients had abortions in Georgia.
The closest state with comparatively few restrictions is Virginia. A drive from Montgomery to Richmond would take roughly 11 hours.
Despite the legal exceptions, an Alabama woman had to travel to Virginia to terminate a pregnancy with fetal anomalies.
Seven states earlier this month voted to enshrine or expand abortion rights in their state constitutions, but such a move would face high hurdles in Alabama. The state has no referendum process allowing citizens to put proposed laws on the ballot, requiring any changes to be made by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Even if the Legislature was moved to add exceptions to the law, it would likely face major legal action from anti-abortion rights activists.
State voters in 2018 approved a “Sanctity of Life” amendment to the state constitution, which says that “it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children,including the right to life.”
The Alabama Supreme Court cited the amendment in its February decision declaring that frozen embryos were children, which put access to IVF services in the state in jeopardy.
Eric Johnston, an attorney who helped write the abortion ban, said that a lawsuit would be filed if the Legislature tried to pass a bill adding exceptions to the abortion ban.
“So it would be very easy: just file a lawsuit, say it’s unconstitutional, and the judge would immediately enter the order,” he said.
Coleman said she hopes lawmakers can come together in a bipartisan way to address exceptions for sexual assault.
“It really upsets me every time we see one of these stories and one of these national stories when someone has passed away, mothers that are passing away because they can’t get the health care that they need, and I don’t want that to happen here in Alabama,” she said.
Coleman said Thursday that she had not yet spoken with her Republican colleagues yet, and she wanted to speak to a fellow Democratic senator first.
Robin Marty, executive director of WAWC, a reproductive health clinic in Tuscaloosa formerly known as the West Alabama Women’s Center, said that all discussions around exceptions or a heartbeat bill were useless until the “Sanctity of Life” amendment was addressed.
“There isn’t any law that we can or exception that we can bring in that couldn’t be overturned if somebody decided that they wanted to challenge the law,” she said.
Johnston said there were no intentions to add exceptions to the bill, and the pro-life community opposes exceptions.
“For those who claim to be pro-life, I think it’s a misconception or misunderstanding by them that they’ve bought into this idea that there ought to be rape and incest exceptions, because rape and incest are very bad things,” he said.
Johnston said that exceptions would also have to be law enforcement-oriented, which would dissuade some women from seeking abortions.
“It’s going to deter people from doing it, and you’ve got to have those to protect against the fraud that would take place and the claims that would be made against innocent men who may have had sex with someone, and then they get charged with rape, and all of a sudden they’ve got to defend themselves, because the woman really wants to get an abortion,” he said.
Marty said that exceptions don’t work in practice.
“But also, there is this part of me that has seen so many people facing pregnancies under all sorts of circumstances, coming into the clinic and if there was the ability to help just one person, I mean, I can’t say that that isn’t something that I would love to be able to take,” she said.
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