The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood are fighting back against Alabama’s new near-total abortion ban with a federal lawsuit, Buzzfeed News reported.
On May 15, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the abortion ban, which essentially makes nearly all performances of abortion illegal. It states that any doctors found guilty of performing abortions could face up to 99 years in prison.
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There are some exceptions to the bill, which was approved by the state’s Senate last week.
These exceptions include if the pregnant woman’s life is considered to be at “serious risk”, but there are no exceptions for a pregnancy that is the result of incest or rape.
Supporters of the ban, including Gov. Ivey, hope to see the case go to the Supreme Court.
There, they expect to see Roe v. Wade , the 1973 landmark decision by the Supreme Court that deemed banned abortions “unconstitutional”, revisited and ultimately overturned.
People across the nation have been vocal in their outrage over this new ban.
Several celebrities have publicly announced a boycott of filming within the state of Alabama, including Jason Bateman .
Actress and TV personality Busy Philips ignited a viral trend on Twitter after encouraging women to share their abortion stories using the hashtag #YouKnowMe.
There have also been protests across the US against the country’s latest abortion bans, largely directed at Alabama.
On May 19 , hundreds of protestors crowded the steps of the state capitol in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, and made their outrage known.
“I just think it’s barbaric,” one protestor, Melissa Perdomo, told WSFA. “It’s a step back.”
Now, the ALCU and Planned Parenthood have filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Alabama.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday, is challenging the state’s new restrictive abortion laws, arguing that Alabama’s is violating women’s right to liberty and privacy, as is theirs under the 14th Amendment.
An attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, called Alabama’s new ban “extreme”.
“The Alabama legislature has been pushing abortion care further and further out of reach for years with medically unnecessary and politically-motivated restrictions, and this extreme abortion ban shows us just how far they’ll go to push their anti-abortion agenda,” Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said in a press release .
She also accused politicians of following Trump’s “anti-abortion agenda”.
“The ACLU will not stand by while politicians emboldened by President Trump’s anti-abortion agenda exploit our health and our lives for political gain,” Kolbi-Molinas said.
She called the ban “blatantly unconstitutional” in the statement.
The lawsuit states that criminalizing abortion is in direct conflict with Roe v. Wade.
“Enforcement of the Ban will thereby inflict immediate and irreparable harm on Plaintiff’s patients by violating their constitutional rights, threatening their health and well-being, and forcing them to continue their pregnancies to term against their will,” the lawsuit states .
