Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed into law legislation that makes it a felony for doctors to perform abortions in most circumstances, effectively outlawing abortion in the state.
“All human life is precious,” Ivey, a Republican, told reporters Wednesday before signing the legislation.
“You certainly cannot deter your efforts to protect the unborn because of cost, even if it means going to the United States Supreme Court,” she added.
The legislation was passed by the state Senate on Tuesday.
“My goal with this bill, and I think all of our goal, is to have Roe vs. Wade turned over, and that decision be sent back to the states so that we can come up with our laws,” said state Rep. Terri Collins, a Republican who represents the Decatur area and who sponsored the bill, according to AL.com.
“Roe v. Wade has ended the lives of millions of children,” Republican state Sen. Clyde Chambliss, who represents the state’s 30th District, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “While we cannot undo the damage that decades of legal precedence under Roe have caused, this bill has the opportunity to save the lives of millions of unborn children.”
A doctor who does abortions in the state will face a Class A felony, punishable by life or 10 to 99 years in prison, and “attempting to perform an abortion would be a Class C felony, punishable by one to 10 years in prison,” USA Today reported. Women who had abortions will face no criminal penalties.
The Alabama chapter of the ACLU already had announced it would sue if Ivey signed the legislation into law:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted that the Alabama abortion law is an attack on women.
“Basic health care includes safe, legal abortion,” Warren tweeted. “Alabama’s backdoor abortion ban is an unconstitutional attack on women—an attack happening all across America. Let’s be very clear: We’re going to fight this ban and defend Roe v. Wade. And we’ll win.”
Melanie Israel, a research associate in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the legislation is in keeping with mainstream America’s pro-life values.
“U.S. abortion policy is extreme among developed nations in allowing elective, late-term abortions, and a lucrative, yet largely unaccountable, abortion industry daily endangers the lives and health of women,” Israel said, adding:
There’s a reason more than 300 pro-life laws have passed at the state level in the last decade. Americans largely reject the radical vision of abortion on demand and are electing pro-life candidates to state legislatures where they in turn pass pro-life laws.
This article has been modified to include the update that Ivey signed the bill into law.