The pro-life attorney who authored 2019 legislation that prohibits nearly all abortions in Alabama says he expects the law to go into effect “pretty quickly” in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Eric Johnston, president of the Southeast Law Institute and the author of the 2019 Human Life Protection Act, said Friday (June 24) he expects a judicial injunction placed on the law that same year to be lifted. Johnston was a guest on the Priority Talk radio program hosted by Greg Davis, president of Alabama Citizens Action Program.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released a statement Friday saying his office would file a motion to lift the injunction against the 2019 law and any other pro-life laws that previously were blocked by courts.
Defining the act
The Human Life Protection Act, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, prohibits nearly all abortions and defines an “unborn child in utero at any stage of development” as a human being, regardless of viability.
The law allows three exceptions: 1. to save the mother’s life, 2. to avoid “risk of substantial physical impairment of a major bodily function” and 3. in the event a physician with at least three years of experience “documents that the woman has a diagnosed serious mental illness” and “will engage in conduct that could result in her death or the death of her unborn child.”
Doctors who violate the law could face a Class A felony.
U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson placed an injunction on the law shortly after Ivey signed it.
“Ultimately, he’s got to do it,” Johnston said of lifting the injunction. “And I think it will be pretty quickly. And it will go into effect.”
Speaking on Priority Talk, Johnston noted that Marshall told abortion clinics they must stop performing abortions.
“Any abortionist or abortion clinic operating in the State of Alabama in violation of Alabama law should immediately cease and desist operations,” Marshall said.
The law’s criminal penalties, Johnston said, will prohibit doctors from trying to violate it.
“The one in Tuscaloosa … they said they quit doing them,” Johnston said of West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa. “They didn’t want to take a chance of going to prison. Because it’s a Class A felony to violate [the law]. I mean, that’s a very good deterrent. … That could end up being life in prison. … We’re treating the unborn child as a person like you and me.
“… You’re not going to have doctors randomly making these decisions and thinking, ‘I can get away with it.’ … Life in prison is not worth doing a $500 back-alley abortion.”
Procedures not impacted
The Human Life Protection Act, Johnston said, does not impact miscarriages or in vitro fertilization.
It also does not outlaw the Plan B morning-after pill, he said, although it does prohibit the abortion pill (formerly known as RU-486).
“It would be illegal,” he said. “The problem is enforcement.”
The 2019 law, he said, does not hold the pregnant woman criminally responsible for an abortion. He added he is morally opposed to charging the woman.
“Our policy since 1990 … is that we don’t prosecute the woman,” he said of the Southeast Law Institute. “She’s got enough problems as it is. We want to provide service and assistance to her.”
Johnston urged the pro-life community to increase their support for women facing crisis pregnancies.
“Now that abortion is gonna be illegal in Alabama, we want to reach out in every kind of way we possibly can — legislatively through non-governmental organizations, crisis pregnancy centers, whatever — to help women and provide resources to them. We owe it to them.”
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