Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder

The remaining doctors who perform abortions — they have dwindled to a handful — work at only three clinics in a state where there once were more than a dozen. Dr. Yashica Robinson, who provides abortions in Huntsville, said she had been the target of a letter-writing campaign to have her hospital privileges revoked. Even some fellow medical workers, she said, have showed signs of hostility toward her.

“If I wasn’t here, this would not be at the top of my list for places to go,” Robinson said of the climate in Alabama.

Then this week came the new law, which, if permitted to take effect by the courts, would end most legal abortions in the state and make it a felony for Robinson to perform one.

“This is absolutely going to scare people away,” she said.

Outside the state, Alabama’s abortion ban has been perceived as a sudden and stunning push by a state Legislature overwhelmingly dominated by men. But this is a state where opposition to abortion is widespread.

Opinion polling has repeatedly shown that a broad segment of Alabama voters, including a majority of women, generally oppose abortion rights, and for many of them, passage of the ban was a triumph. Just last year, residents overwhelmingly endorsed a change to the state constitution declaring it Alabama’s policy “to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”

Although women hold only 22 of 140 seats in the Alabama Legislature — one of the smallest percentages in the country — they also held important roles in the abortion debate in Montgomery, the capital. A woman, Rep. Terri Collins, was the primary sponsor of the new law, and Gov. Kay Ivey, the second woman ever to lead Alabama, signed the ban, calling it “a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

“A lot of Republican women are actually more hard-core about pro-life issues than men,” said Jackie Curtiss, the chairwoman of the Young Republican Federation of Alabama. “All Republicans in Alabama, for the most part, are pro-life, but sometimes the ones who push it the hardest are women.”

Indeed, deeply felt personal views on abortion, often cemented in Alabama’s churches, can also be of enormous political consequence. Democrats and Republicans alike acknowledge that for many people in both parties, regardless of gender, opposition to abortion is simply good politics.

National debate over the state’s abortion ban has focused on Ivey, a Republican who was little known beyond Alabama until this week but has been one of the state’s most enduring political survivors. Since 2003, Ivey, 74, has held statewide office — treasurer, then lieutenant governor and finally governor through an era of extraordinary tumult in Alabama politics that included a state House speaker’s indictment and an attention-seizing U.S. Senate race.

Ivey became governor in 2017 after a tawdry scandal led to Robert Bentley’s resignation. Last year, capping a campaign marked by her defense of Confederate monuments and of the abortion-related proposal to amend the state constitution, she won a full term with ease.

At her inauguration, she left an empty seat for Lurleen Wallace, the first woman to serve as Alabama’s governor, who Ivey described as “one of my childhood heroes.”

But Ivey’s role in the abortion legislation resonated most at the end, and Republicans largely relied on Collins, who represents a district in north Alabama, to be the public face of the abortion ban. Like Ivey, Collins, who joined the Legislature in 2010 as Republicans took control of Montgomery for the first time since Reconstruction, has been unflinching in her opposition to abortion.

“This bill is about challenging Roe v. Wade and protecting the lives of the unborn because an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection,” Collins said before the governor signed the proposal — and after lawmakers went along with her efforts to keep exceptions for rape and incest out of the bill.

Despite a national outcry — and a more muted one in Alabama — years of polling suggests that many residents support strict abortion limits. In 2014, the Pew Research Center found that 58% of Alabamians believed that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Of them, 51% were women. Public and private polling in later years have showed similar patterns, political strategists said.

Emboldened, state officials have for years worked to curb abortions, and records show the efforts have had significant effect. In 2007, state records show, there were 11,267 abortions in Alabama. In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 6,768.

Alabama’s three remaining clinics are in cities: Huntsville, the anchor of a prosperous part of north Alabama; Montgomery, the capital; and Tuscaloosa, where a clinic stands across the street from apartments popular with University of Alabama students. In most cases, Medicaid will not pay for abortions in the clinics. Outside them, protesters sometimes stand in the rain.

The rightward shift in Alabama’s abortion politics have been heavily influenced by the state’s most powerful religious denominations, which have increasingly emphasized the issue in recent years. And in interviews with women in Alabama, religion often surfaced as an essential factor in their opposition to the procedure.

“I’m Christian and I don’t believe we need to be playing God, deciding who gets born and who gets aborted,” said Caroline Reddy, 32, a mother of two children. “I believe it’s murder. If people would have behaved in a proper way, they wouldn’t be in that situation.”

In Hamilton, not far from the Mississippi line, Mallory Parker, 17, said she believed every pregnancy had a divine purpose, even in instances of rape or incest.

“I believe if a woman carries a child, despite the situation, it is part of God’s plan,” she said. “No one is asking her to raise it, but I do believe if that child was created, it has a purpose and it’s our duty to humanity to allow it life instead of dictating if it should live or not just because of how it got here.”

Still, other women said they were alarmed by the limits emerging from the Legislature and the governor’s office, which opponents have vowed to challenge in court.

“It’s insulting as an educated woman — in consultation with my highly educated doctor — that I can’t come to a decision that’s best for me and for my health,” said Erin Arnold, who lives in Birmingham and teaches biology. “A woman should have agency over her body.”

She added: “I sometimes wonder if Alabama is the state to raise my children. I waver. When laws like this pass, it’s frustrating.”

A culture of silence about women’s health is pervasive in many of the state’s 67 counties.

“Girls and women do not talk about their health issues here,” said Emily Capilouto, 31, who also lives in Birmingham. “You turn to those close to you when these issues arise, but now we are talking about it on a state level and nationally because of what’s happening, but I don’t know that there are larger conversations going on in the community.”

Beyond highly limited abortion access, critics of the bill contend that the restrictions distract from Alabama’s endemic problems and further threaten a deeply troubled health care network that offers the state’s roughly 2 million women few options for specialized care, especially in rural areas.

Across the state, there are fewer than 500 obstetricians and gynecologists, and in almost half of Alabama’s counties, there are no doctors who specialize in the health of women. In crucial barometers of health care quality, including infant mortality and deaths of women during childbirth, Alabama has some of the nation’s worst figures.

“If you argue the point that this is a matter of life for children, there is no evidence from birth to death that Alabama is in any way concerned about the lives of children,” said Wayne Flynt, one of the state’s leading historians. “There is a profound difference between being pro-fetus, in which I think Alabama’s credentials are pretty solid, and pro-life.”

Republicans dispute that. But as the week — and the outrage — wore on, they seemed increasingly mindful that voters, no matter their enthusiasm for the ban, might soon want to move beyond the uproar.

“For the remainder of this session, I now urge all members of the Alabama Legislature to continue seeking the best ways possible to foster a better Alabama in all regards, from education to public safety,” Ivey said after she signed the bill. “We must give every person the best chance for a quality life and a promising future.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="e49a6b8d-bf42-3eac-a101-e74fecb553fc" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/abortion-law-women.html">The New York Times</a>.

In Alabama, Opposition to Abortion Runs Deep

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Even before Alabama passed one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on abortions in decades, the procedure had been in decline in the state after years of limits.

In Alabama, opposition to abortion runs deep

The legislation bans abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizes the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with felonies and face up to 99 years in prison. It includes an exception for cases when the mother’s life is at serious risk, but not for cases of rape or incest — a subject of fierce debate among lawmakers in recent days.

The House approved the measure — the most far-reaching effort in the nation this year to curb abortion rights — last month. It now moves to the desk of Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican. Although the governor has not publicly committed to signing the legislation, many Republican lawmakers expect her support.

In an email Tuesday night, a spokeswoman for the governor, Lori Davis Jhons, said Ivey would “withhold comment until she has had a chance to thoroughly review the final version of the bill that passed.”

Opponents have vowed to challenge the measure in federal court if it becomes law. Even the legislation’s supporters expect that a lower court will block the measure. But it was drafted with exactly that in mind. The ban’s architects, reflecting the rising confidence of abortion critics nationwide after the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, hope that the justices will use the case to reconsider the central holding in Roe and allow the Alabama measure to take effect.

“Until now, there was no prospect of reversing Roe,” said Eric Johnston, who founded the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition and serves as its president, and has spent more than 30 years trying to ban abortion.

Johnston, who drafted the Alabama bill and sees himself as a purist on the abortion issue, said he did not support the spate of restrictive legislation that other states have enacted in recent months, including so-called fetal heartbeat bills. These bills essentially ban abortions starting at six weeks after conception, a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

Given the current leanings of the Supreme Court, Johnston said, making such a measure, which does not directly challenge Roe, the subject of the court’s next major abortion case would be a wasted opportunity.

“Why not go all the way?” he asked.

The Senate gallery was full before the debate started Tuesday afternoon. A long line of people waited to take seats when people left. Many in the audience were abortion rights activists, and at times they laughed when male lawmakers spoke about pregnancy and other female health issues.

Sen. Rodger Smitherman, a Democrat, told colleagues that during his wife’s pregnancy with their son, doctors had told him it was unlikely that the child would be born alive. Smitherman said that he and his wife had decided to have the child anyway, and that his son had been born with significant health problems. “The significance,” he said, “is I had the choice.”

Democrats and abortion-rights advocates say that the Alabama measure would drive the procedure underground, endangering the lives of women and girls and disproportionately affecting poor and minority Alabamians.

“We want abortions to be safe, and we want them to be few, but it should be legal, because there will be abortions,” said Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, a Democrat and one of the four women in the 35-member Senate.

“The people who have the wherewithal will fly out of state,” she added. “Not everyone can afford to do that.”

The Senate took the bill up again Tuesday after an earlier attempt to debate the measure last week descended into shouting and chaos. Tensions erupted, including some within the dominant Republican Party, over whether to include exceptions to the ban in cases of rape or incest. A Senate committee had amended the bill to include those exceptions, prompting a bitter dispute that postponed consideration of the bill for days.

Even so, the fate of the bill was never in much doubt, and it did not take long for the proposal to return to the Senate floor. It passed after lawmakers rejected the amendment adding rape and incest exceptions.

Sen. Clyde Chambliss, a Republican and sponsor of the bill in the Senate, defended the omission of those exceptions.

“When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb,” he said, “it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.”

Other state measures to restrict abortion rights have advanced in the South and the Midwest this year and invited legal fights. Already, the governors of Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio have signed fetal heartbeat bills. And Arkansas moved up the cutoff point for legal abortions to 18 weeks of pregnancy, from 20 weeks.

The Alabama measure, though, goes farther. In addition to the potential 99-year sentence for performing abortions, doctors face the threat of a 10-year term for attempting to perform one. Women who receive abortions would not be prosecuted.

The timing of any litigation over the bill is uncertain. Opponents of the measure intend to argue that Alabama will have unlawfully restricted a right that the courts have repeatedly reaffirmed since Roe.

Alabama, a conservative state where Republicans control the Legislature, has repeatedly sought to enact limits on abortion. In 2018, voters overwhelmingly endorsed an amendment to the Alabama Constitution declaring 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, state lawmakers imposed a 48-hour waiting period for abortions; mandated that women receive counseling before undergoing the procedure; and required minors to receive consent from a parent or legal guardian to have an abortion.

Emboldened by the passage of the state constitutional amendment, lawmakers set out this year with a far more aggressive strategy in mind.

Sen. Greg Reed, a Republican who is the state Senate majority leader, said in a statement after Tuesday night’s vote that the measure “simply recognizes that an unborn baby is a child who deserves protection — and despite the best efforts of abortion proponents, this bill will become law because Alabamians stand firmly on the side of life.”

Supporters of abortion rights took a grimmer view.

“Today is a dark day for women in Alabama and across this country,” said Staci Fox, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates. “Banning abortion is bad enough. Imprisoning doctors for providing care goes beyond the brink. Alabama politicians will forever live in infamy for this vote and we will make sure that every woman knows who to hold accountable.”

Even as some states have moved to limit abortions, other states with Democratic-leaning governments have rushed this year to fortify legal protections for the procedure. Vermont recently took steps toward a state constitutional amendment enshrining a “right to personal reproductive autonomy.” And in January, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York signed a measure that guaranteed a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9aec1daa-d763-3a48-a001-103e7c424a86" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/alabama-abortion-ban.html">The New York Times</a>.

Alabama Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in the State

The Alabama Senate approved a measure Tuesday that would outlaw almost all abortions in the state, setting up a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the case that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

Alabama lawmakers vote to effectively ban abortion in the state

The effort in Alabama, where the state Senate could vote as soon as Thursday, is unfolding as Republicans, emboldened by President Donald Trump and the shifting alignment of the Supreme Court, intensify a long-running campaign to curb abortion access.

Yet the Alabama measure is also a departure from the incremental strategy that critics of abortions have often pursued: There is nothing gradual about the sweeping ban that the state’s lawmakers are considering.

Alabama’s measure would effectively ban most abortions at every stage of pregnancy, from conception on, and would criminalize the procedure for doctors. A doctor could be charged with a felony, and face up to 99 years in prison, for performing an abortion in most circumstances; a doctor could risk a 10-year prison term for attempting an abortion. Some exceptions were being considered, including provisions added to the measure Wednesday that would allow abortions in cases of rape or incest.

“The back door hasn’t worked, I’ll just tell you,” said Rep. Rich Wingo, a Republican from Tuscaloosa County and an architect of the Alabama legislation, which the state House approved last month. “Other methods haven’t worked to date. This is a yes or no, up or down.”

Some measures in other states have tested the boundaries of court protections for abortion in various ways. But the expansive Alabama legislation stands in direct opposition to the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973, which legalized abortion up to the point when a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually about 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

As with the long list of abortion limits being weighed in other places, the Alabama measure is aimed at reaching the Supreme Court, where conservatives have been buoyed by the arrival of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Alabama Republicans say they want the court to re-examine the core issues in Roe.

The move stands in contrast to the approach of conservatives in some other states, who have argued that a slower, piecemeal approach, chipping away at Roe v. Wade, is more likely to find success in the courts and result in lasting legal curbs to abortion.

“Our position is just simply that the unborn child is a person, and the bill goes directly to that,” Wingo said. “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.”

The differing tactics of opponents of abortion have been on display this year, as new abortion restrictions have sped through statehouses in the South and Midwest. On Tuesday, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a so-called heartbeat bill that essentially bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — a time when many women do not yet know they are pregnant. Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio have passed similar laws this year, and legislators in South Carolina and Tennessee considered comparable restrictions.

Other states have taken more limited steps. Arkansas reduced by two weeks the time frame in which a woman can have an abortion legally. Missouri legislators have been considering an array of new limits.

“This legislative session could turn out to be the most harmful for women’s health in decades,” said Leana Wen, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The proposal in Alabama, where voters amended the state constitution last year to declare 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,” is the latest far-reaching measure with a reasonable prospect of passing.

On Wednesday, a committee of the state Senate sent the measure on to the full Senate, after amending it to include exceptions for cases of rape or incest — exceptions that were not in the version of the bill the State House already passed. The House version allowed an exception only in the case of a “serious health risk” to the mother.

It was not clear Wednesday whether the House would go along with added exceptions, or whether the Senate committee’s changes would imperil the legislation.

Elsewhere, opponents of abortion have urged states to adopt rules like waiting periods and mandatory counseling, with the notion that some limits are better than none. “My philosophy is, you throw spaghetti up against the wall and you see what sticks,” said Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action, a private nonprofit advocacy group.

But in Alabama, critics of abortion said that a piecemeal approach has proved inadequate. Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition and a lawyer who drafted much of the pending bill, said that more limited legislation in other states had failed to accomplish the central goal: to force the Supreme Court to decide whether Roe should remain binding.

“The heartbeat bills are in many ways a waste of time, because you’re going below the standard of Roe,” he said. “Why not go all the way?”

So Johnston said he sought to write what he called a “clean bill,” straightforward legislation intended to force federal courts to unequivocally take a side on the basic legality of abortion.

“We avoid a lot of other issues, like morning-after pills, because that’s not what we’re after,” he said. “What’s important to address is if an unborn child is a person.”

Last month, the state House approved its version of the bill by a vote of 74-3, after more than two dozen Democrats walked out of the chamber in protest. Although Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has not publicly committed to signing the legislation, Republican lawmakers said they believe she will.

In Alabama, a conservative state whose capital is dominated by Republicans, the number of abortion clinics has fallen to three from 13 over about the last two decades. In past years, 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.

Language in the new measure likens abortion to the Holocaust and other 20th-century atrocities, stating that the number of legal abortions performed since the Roe decision amounted to “more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.”

Critics of the Alabama proposal have promised litigation if Ivey signs it into law, regardless of the potential legal risks of revisiting the issue in the courts. Planned Parenthood has said it intends to sue to block the legislation immediately, on the ground that it would unlawfully restrict access to abortion, a right that has been reaffirmed by the courts since Roe.

Even as some states have moved to limit abortions, other states with Democratic-leaning governments have rushed this year to fortify legal protections for the procedure. This week, Vermont took steps toward a constitutional amendment enshrining a “right to personal reproductive autonomy.” And in January, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a measure that guaranteed a “fundamental right” to abortion in the state.

Staci Fox, the Atlanta-based president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said that attempts to limit abortion — even those that are ultimately fought in court — have a chilling effect.

“They are saying to women, ‘We don’t trust you to make these deeply personal decisions,’” Fox said. “It can be very confusing — what is real and what is not. And we’ve been hearing from concerned women as these bills bubble up.”

Jenna King, 27, said she was closely watching what might happen next with Alabama’s proposal for a nearly complete ban. She recalled how her father, a Southern Baptist pastor, had been furious when she told him she was pregnant at 17 and wanted an abortion. Nonetheless, she said, he drove her to an abortion clinic in Birmingham, about 90 minutes away from their home.

King said she believed the procedure had given her the opportunity to graduate from college and then have a child when she felt prepared. She now has a 2-year-old son, and said she plans to attend law school in the future.

Recalling her confrontation with her father, she said, “He had a look of disgust on his face.” But she was determined.

“I told him, ‘I’m going to go to college and I’m going to get on with my life,’” she recalled. “Thank God abortion was legal when it was.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="f751bb8e-ada0-329f-a7f7-3cb3a2271b31" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/abortion-alabama-ban.html">The New York Times</a>.

As States Race to Limit Abortions, Alabama Goes Further, Seeking to Outlaw Most of Them

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Amid a flurry of new limits on abortion being sought in states around the nation, Alabama is weighing a measure that would go farther than all of them — outlawing most abortions almost entirely.

As states race to limit abortions, Alabama goes further, seeking to outlaw most of them

Mississippi is only the latest state to press for the strict abortion limit — the sort that has already been passed and then blocked in the courts in states including Kentucky, which approved it earlier this month, and Iowa, where a law passed last year was struck down by a state court in January. About 10 other states also are debating bills to ban abortions once fetal heartbeats are found, a point at which some women and girls are not yet aware that they are pregnant.

In a signing ceremony in Jackson on Thursday, Bryant described a heartbeat as “the universal hallmark of life since man’s very beginning.”

“We’re going to try to protect that child whenever we can,” said Bryant, who is barred by term limits from seeking another term as governor. “We think that this is showing the profound respect and desire of Mississippians to protect the sanctity of that very unborn life whenever possible.”

Supporters of abortion rights said Thursday that they would sue to block the new Mississippi law, which will take effect in July unless a court intervenes.

“This ban is one of the most restrictive abortion bans signed into law, and we will take Mississippi to court to make sure it never takes effect,” said Hillary Schneller, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group based in New York.

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican and a candidate to succeed Bryant, said that Mississippi would be unafraid to spend money to defend the law, which the Senate approved without debate on Tuesday.

“There have been threats of lawsuits, and I’m sure that’s going to happen, and that’s OK,” Reeves said. “I will put my record of fiscal responsibility up against anyone in this building today, and anyone that’s has ever stood in this building before, and I have absolutely no problem supporting strongly whatever it costs to defend this lawsuit because I care about unborn children.”

While fetal heartbeat proposals are not new, momentum around them has grown significantly during this year’s legislative sessions in Republican-controlled state capitals.

The measures clash with Supreme Court decisions that have recognized a woman’s right to an abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy. And opponents of abortion say that is part of the intent: to land a new case before the current Supreme Court in hopes of setting sharper limits or even an outright ban. The confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh — and the potential shifting of the court’s direction — has provoked new urgency among critics of abortion.

“I would be proud if it’s Kentucky that takes it all the way up to the Supreme Court and we challenge Roe v. Wade,” Damon Thayer, the Republican majority leader of the Kentucky Senate, told reporters in January as state lawmakers considered a fetal heartbeat measure. “That would be absolutely the pinnacle of my career in the Legislature.”

Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas are among the states expected to approve fetal heartbeat measures this year.

In Georgia, where the House approved such a bill this month, the issue stirred a personal and passionate debate.

“A child in the womb should be worthy of full legal protection,” said Rep. Ed Setzler, a Republican who sponsored the measure, which has already won the backing of Gov. Brian Kemp.

Rep. Erica Thomas, a Democrat, disagreed.

“No one is more appreciative of life at this point than I am: In August, I will have the privilege to bring beautiful life to this earth,” she said “But that decision was my husband and I’s decision to make, and no one in this chamber had the right to make that choice for me and my family.”

In other states, lawmakers opposed to abortion are taking different tacks.

Efforts in several states this year, including Oklahoma, seek to add abortion to felony homicide laws, potentially sending doctors to prison.

And a relatively new strategy in limiting abortions would ban the procedure if the reason for it was Down syndrome. Utah, Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky are considering such bills this year, which also prohibit abortions based on gender, race or color. Kentucky’s law, signed Tuesday by Gov. Matt Bevin, was temporarily blocked by a federal court judge the next day.

Ohio, Tennessee and several other states are also considering so-called trigger laws, which would immediately ban abortions if Roe v. Wade was overturned. Arkansas approved a trigger law last month.

Restricting the amount of time during a pregnancy that women have to obtain a legal abortion has long been a primary strategy of abortion opponents, though the efforts have grown more and more stringent over time.

Arkansas, which five years ago saw a court strike down its ban on abortions after 12 weeks if a heartbeat could be detected, this month narrowed the period, from 20 weeks to 18 weeks, in which abortions are permitted under state law. Asa Hutchinson, the state’s Republican governor, signed the bill into law this month.

Many of the Republican lawmakers who dominate state government in Arkansas have voted for rules tightening abortion rights this legislative session, but Dan Douglas, a Republican member of the House who described himself as “anti-abortion,” startled colleagues with the story of one of his nieces, who became pregnant last year.

Douglas said his niece had been told the fetus had no bladder or functional kidneys.

“The doctor explained to her that she could carry the child throughout the remainder of the gestation, the entire nine months, and deliver that baby alive into this world,” he said. “But once it got here, once it was delivered, it would live two to three days, and those two to three days would be miserable, excruciating, agonizing for that baby and for that mother.”

He added: “Who are we to sit in judgment of their decision?”

Mississippi, which has a single abortion clinic, often takes some of the country’s most aggressive stands against abortion rights. In November, a federal judge blocked a state law that would have banned abortions after 15 weeks.

In the ruling, which is being appealed, the judge wrote that the Mississippi Legislature “chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

If the courts ultimately uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban, a similar law will take effect in Louisiana.

This article originally appeared in <a id="150bfd65-0afc-40a0-98ed-d50172e6c466" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/us/abortion-laws-states.html">The New York Times</a>.

Mississippi bans abortions if heartbeat can be heard, expect a legal fight

Phil Bryant, the Republican governor of Mississippi, on Thursday signed a bill largely banning abortions once doctors can detect a trace of a fetal heartbeat with an ultrasound, a milestone that can come as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

Supporters of abortion rights said Thursday they would sue to block the new Mississippi law, which will take effect in July unless a court intervenes.

The measures clash with Supreme Court decisions that have recognized a woman’s right to an abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy. And opponents of abortion say that is part of the intent: to land a new case before the current Supreme Court in hopes of setting sharper limits or even an outright ban.

“I would be proud if it’s Kentucky that takes it all the way up to the Supreme Court and we challenge Roe v. Wade,” Damon Thayer, Republican majority leader of the Kentucky Senate, told reporters in January as state lawmakers considered a fetal heartbeat measure. “That would be absolutely the pinnacle of my career in the Legislature.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/us/abortion-laws-states.html" id="02f00f8d-4305-3c72-a6aa-2ee96ced3773">The New York Times</a>.

Mississippi Bans Abortions if Heartbeat Can Be Heard. Expect a Legal Fight.

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Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder

Articles written by the author

In Alabama, opposition to abortion runs deep

Alabama lawmakers vote to effectively ban abortion in the state

As states race to limit abortions, Alabama goes further, seeking to outlaw most of them

Mississippi bans abortions if heartbeat can be heard, expect a legal fight

Mississippi Bans Abortions if Heartbeat Can Be Heard. Expect a Legal Fight.

Mississippi Bans Abortions if Heartbeat Can Be Heard. Expect a Legal Fight.