 Last week the Alabama State Senate tried to rush through a draconian anti-abortion bill without even holding a roll-call vote for it So expectedly other lawmakers weren't too happy about this and they spoke out and Chaos erupted on the floor of the Alabama Senate now the vote on this bill ended up getting delayed Temporarily and I predicted last week when we talked about this that ultimately I think this bill will probably end up passing and Unfortunately, I was correct about that it passed and it now heads to the desk of Alabama's Republican governor Who's also vehemently anti-abortion now? I don't necessarily know that it's a foregone conclusion that she's gonna sign it I think probably it's going to be the case that she signs us into law However, this bill is so extreme that even other so-called pro-life activists take issue with it So let's talk about the bill as Kate Smith of CVS news reports The Alabama State Senate passed a near total abortion ban in a 25 to 6 vote on Tuesday night The legislation provides no exceptions for rape or incest The bill is the most restrictive anti-abortion measure passed since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 the legislation House Bill 314 Human Life Protection Act Bans all abortions in the state except when abortion is necessary in order to prevent Serious health risk to the woman according to the bill's text. It criminalizes the procedure Reclassifying abortion as a class A felony punishable up to 99 years in prison for doctors Attempted abortions will be reclassified as a class C penalty. So this is downright barbaric, this is extreme even for the Republican Party They're passing a bill that tells women even if you are raped You have to have that baby that is not just immoral But it is Straight up barbaric. They're taking us right back to the dark ages How cruel is it to tell someone who was sexually assaulted someone who was raped one of the most Horrific things that can happen to a human being that they are forced to have a baby and if a doctor Provides that person a victim of rape with an abortion That doctor could face 99 years in prison The Republican Party At this point, they are irredeemable the only way that American conservatism can be saved is if the Republican Party collapses entirely and Democrats become the new de facto party on the right since they're already pretty right-wing already and a new left-wing party emerges and takes the Democratic Party's place because this level of extremism is not healthy. It's destabilizing This is insanity Now ideally we'd have three to four political parties overall But duverger's law dictates that when you live in a one-to-take-all system You're almost always going to go back to having just two parties. So we need electoral reform So these types of extreme fringe voices are more marginalized and they can't actually come to power as frequently But nonetheless, this is what we're dealing with We have extremists anti-abortion extremists passing laws That even the most pro-life people might take issue with and the reason why I say that is because Americans aren't with them. You can say sure, you know, they live in Alabama. So this is a deep red state But when you look at public opinion polls Very few people in the country support outright bans on abortions and even those that support bans on abortions They always have this caveat that we've got to have an exception for rape and incest But this bill was passed without that exception. We're seeing these types of extremist bills pop up across the country Since the Republican Party secured a very conservative five-vote majority on the Supreme Court and their goal here is to instigate a challenge They're passing these bills with the explicit intent to get them challenged and appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court so This is just it's honestly beyond the pale even for Republicans because they've been extreme But the fact that they would go this far. I mean It's unspeakable. It's just unspeakable now the problem is that if you truly are anti-abortion and you don't want women to have abortions Well, there are various policy prescriptions That they could pass these lawmakers could do things to minimize the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus Reduce the number of abortions, but they reject all of these solutions as Parker Malloy points out here They can opt for comprehensive sex education in lieu of abstinence only education, which has been proven to not work and If they did this this would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, but they reject that we could increase access to contraception That would have the same effect, but they reject that as well So they'll reject all of these solutions that are proven to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus reduce the number of abortions But they swat all of that away. We want to have our cake in you too. We want to say no every time you have sex it must be with the intent to procreate and if you get pregnant as soon as Conception occurs. There's a third person in the room. That's another human being you are not allowed to abort that baby And even if you're raped now You're still gonna be forced to have that baby against your will. This is Extremism it's absolutely extremism and It's interesting to me that whenever Republicans talk about this straw man and they suppose that liberals want to ban guns which Nobody's saying that but they suggest that our ultimate goal is to ban guns But they tell us well banning guns isn't going to work because Criminals are going to do what they've always done. They're going to secure guns Illegally now. I'm not comparing women to criminals, but if you extend that logic to the issue of abortion If we make abortions illegal, do you honestly believe that that will reduce the number of abortions? No abortions will continue to happen, but the number of Safe legal abortions will decrease and unsafe illegal abortions will increase and This isn't just me saying that this is what evidence dictates because a 1976 study Confirmed that once abortions became legal abortion related deaths Sharply decreased. So if you're pro-life keeping abortion legal is Literally a policy that will minimize the number of deaths because if you tell a woman who was raped that she can't have an abortion She's gonna seek out an illegal unsafe abortion and that could jeopardize her life because you thought that you would impose your morality on everyone else and Truly if you are pro-life Abortion should be the least of your concerns because we have Presidents in both parties that are bombing people innocent women and children in the Middle East and North Africa Donald Trump's first raid in Yemen resulted in an American girl being killed We are giving Saudi Arabia bombs that they are dropping on school buses in Yemen And what they choose to focus on is this narrow issue where they think They're being moral you're not being moral you're being an extremist and By telling women that they're not allowed to have an abortion and going a step further saying they're not allowed to have an abortion Even in the event they were raped You're not being the moral person you're being cruel you're being immoral now this goes so far and Knowing that they are trying to catalyze a challenge to this and get this to the Supreme Court They may have inadvertently undermined their own goal because even Pat Robertson another anti-abortion extremist Realizes that they're kind of undermining their own cause here by going this far I think Alabama has gone too far. They've passed the law. They would give a 99 year prison sentence to people who could commit abortion There's no exception for rape or incest It's an extreme law and that they want to challenge Roe versus Wade But my humble view is that this is not the case We want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one I never thought I would say this but Pat Robertson He kind of has a point because this someone who's thinking about this strategically He genuinely wants abortion in America to be illegal He does he wants it to be illegal, but what he's communicating to these Alabamian lawmakers is look you've gone too far If you truly want to make sure that Roe v. Wade is overturned what you do is you push the limit only to an extent You make it so that way you pass a bill that gives the state a little bit more discretion to regulate abortion But what Alabama did here? It's so beyond the pale so punitive so brazenly extreme that even the conservative Supreme Court justices who hold a majority may not be able to give Anti-abortion activists what they want because this bill just goes too far So the silver lining is that their zealotry may ultimately end up being their downfall But nonetheless in the state of Alabama This is horrifying if you are raped in the state of Alabama You will be denied an abortion and if a doctor chooses to give you one regardless of that law He or she may face up to 99 years in prison I don't know what to even say about this other than this is downright Disgusting and quite frankly terrifying that we have one party in this country. That's willing to go This extreme this far to the right