The Republican-controlled Senate, faced with procedural disputes and intraparty debate over details of the measure, abruptly adjourned until Tuesday. Chaos spilled into public view on the Senate floor, but it neither definitively advanced nor sank the proposal that is the nation’s most far-reaching effort to curb abortion this year.
The measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalize the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with a felony and face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion unless a woman’s health was at “serious” risk. On Thursday, in a maneuver that helped set off a chorus of shouts and screams on the Senate floor, some Republicans sought to abandon provisions that would have allowed exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape or incest.
The House has already passed a measure without such exceptions, and a Senate committee added them Wednesday, stirring anger from some who thought they watered down the effort to ban abortion as broadly as possible and to force a new look at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion up to the point when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Although the Senate removed the exceptions Thursday, the provision could be restored before a final vote.
In the end, with the Alabama chamber in turmoil and even senior lawmakers flabbergasted, Thursday served as a preview of the debate that will play out once the bill returns to the Senate floor as soon as next week.
“If we want to talk about privacy, I would want to talk about the right of privacy of that unborn child,” said state Sen. Clyde Chambliss, a Republican from the Montgomery area. “That child has a right to develop and be delivered without its privacy being invaded, invaded by forceps and scalpels. That’s what this bill is about today.”
Democrats have complained that the measure would nearly eliminate abortion rights in Alabama, and they have argued that lawmakers should spend more time on the state’s most pressing issues, not national cultural battles. But they have also conceded that the bill is very likely to pass the Legislature.
“We will probably spend more money on legal fees on this particular case than it takes for us to be able to bring healthy babies into the world,” Sen. Bobby Singleton, the top Democrat in the chamber, said Thursday. “But we’re willing to do legislation for grandstanding versus the ability to look at the human factor and allow a woman to have her own choice.”
The legislation has moved through Montgomery, the Alabama capital, just as opponents of legal abortion in the South and beyond have been encouraged and emboldened by the realignment of the Supreme Court with the arrival of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This year, especially in the South and Midwest, state lawmakers have pursued a range of proposals to limit abortions, including so-called heartbeat bills that essentially ban abortions at six weeks of pregnancy.
Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not committed to signing the measure into law if it reaches her desk, but many state lawmakers expect her eventual support.
Opponents of the legislation have vowed to sue to block the measure if it becomes law. They said that they would argue that Alabama would have unlawfully restricted access to abortion, a right that the courts have repeatedly reaffirmed since Roe.
“Passing bills that they know will be struck down in federal court are a waste of millions of taxpayer dollars that could be going to address the urgent needs in our communities,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama said in a statement. “Ignoring those needs in favor of scoring political points is an irresponsible use of their power and privilege.”
In the statement, issued before the bill’s turbulent appearance on the Senate floor, the ACLU warned, “If the full Senate and governor insist on passing this bill, they will see us in court.”
Although the bill’s supporters expect it to be blocked in at least one lower court, they hope that the Supreme Court will ultimately seize on the legal battle to reconsider its essential holding in Roe.
“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” said state Rep. Rich Wingo, a Republican who supported the legislation. “Courts can do — and have done — many things good and bad, but we would hope and pray that they would go and that they would overturn Roe.”
Alabama, a conservative state where Republicans dominate politics and where the number of abortion clinics has fallen over the years, has long sought to limit abortion access. Last year, voters supported an amendment to the Alabama Constitution that declared that the “public policy of this state is to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”
In the past, lawmakers set a 48-hour waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling before undergoing procedures; and required minors to receive consent for an abortion from a parent or legal guardian.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.