HB 178 IS ALASKA’S ‘LIFE AT CONCEPTION’ BILL OF THE YEAR
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, the most restrictive set of abortion laws in the nation. The bill makes it a felony for a physician to perform an abortion in Alabama unless the mother’s life is at risk.
Across the nation, a dozen states are debating their own versions of the “heartbeat” legislation, similar to the one signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this month, banning abortions after a heartbeat is detectable in the fetus. That’s about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.
Heartbeat bills have been passed in Ohio and Mississippi, and one is on the verge of passing in Louisiana.
Other states, such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and South Carolina have dozens of bills in play or already passed that would greatly restrict abortions. The Michigan Senate, for example, passed legislation prohibiting “dismemberment abortions” after the second trimester.
On the last day of the Alaska 2019 legislative session, Rep. David Eastman and Rep. Sharon Jackson offered a “Life at Conception” bill in Alaska. HB 178.
HB 178 is nearly identical to HB 250, offered in 2017 and it is the only anti-abortion legislation to have been offered this year. HB 250 had been referred to four committees in 2017 and never even got a hearing under the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. HB 178 has been referred to three committees, and will likely see a similar fate, as the House is still under the control of Democrats.
However, this year the Alaska’s House and Senate have passed an operating budget that expressly prohibits state Medicaid funds from paying for elective abortions.
Democrats in office, all of whom support a woman’s right to terminate the life of the child in her womb, didn’t put up a fight. Rep. Daniel Ortiz of Ketchikan said in Finance Committee that it would harm low-income women. Rep. Andy Josephson said it would be found unconstitutional.
But Rep. Cathy Tilton, who offered the measure, said that the $334,000 that the state has paid annually for non-medically necessary abortions needs to be gone from the budget. And surprisingly, she got her way. Democrats are counting on it being deemed unconstitutional in court, so chose not to fight it in the court of public opinion.
It’s not the first time state lawmakers have tried to legislative against abortion, but the courts have always sided with Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women.
In February, the Alaska Supreme Court upheld a ruling stopping the State from enforcing two regulations limiting the public funding of abortions, a lawsuit that was brought by Planned Parenthood based on the equal protection clause of the Alaska Constitution.
Last year, Sen. Cathy Giessel offered SB 124, which would have mandated that medical professionals provide lifesaving aid to a baby who survives an abortion. In other words, if you didn’t kill the baby on the first attempt, you have to take reasonable steps to help it live.
That bill never made it past Senate Finance Committee before the session ended and the bill was effectively dead. Giessel then took heavy fire from the very-absolutist Alaska Right to Life organization for not going far enough with the legislation. They savaged her for even trying to save a baby or two from the knife. It’s an all-or-nothing group.
The rush of laws being proposed across the country to reduce or eliminate abortions are lawsuit bait because the majority of Americans are still uncomfortable about unrestricted abortion and because those wanting to limit abortion know the U.S. Supreme Court is slightly more conservative than is has been in recent years.
According to a poll conducted for The Hill news site, more than half of registered voters believe that laws banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy are “not too restrictive.”
The May 10-11 poll found that 21 percent of registered voters said that such abortion bans are “too lenient” while 34 percent said they believe they are “just right.”
Forty-five percent of respondents said they believe such laws are “too restrictive.”
Being a parent that has lost two “unborn” children to abortion, about 30 years ago. Hardly a day passes that I don’t wonder how those two would have turned out. My other children (adults now) are a constant source of pride and love to me. I deeply regret not taking a stronger stand against abortion all those years ago. Hindsight is always 20-20. My take on abortion is that, a child, no matter what stage of development, is entitled to the “right to life”. Abortion is an unjustified abomination of “womens’ rights”. The rights of an unborn child are equal to the rights of any human, unborn or otherwise, in my opinion. I deeply resent any public payment to end the lives of any person, unborn or otherwise. I only hope my inaction to prevent the abortions don’t doom me to hell for my mistake.
It is not your place to make decisions for others. I’m sorry that you regret your choice but your opinion doesnt matter in other women’s healthcare decisions. Many of these “right to life” Bill’s ignore the fact that at the 6 week mark you are really only 4 weeks pregnant and most women don’t even know they are pregnant or have yet to miss a period. You are wanting to doom children with health issues incompatible with life to a short life filled with only suffering. Why do you want to do that.
Have you had an abortion? Secondly, no one has the right to murder someone else, no matter the state of suffering. Too many times healthy babies are born after the medical professionals have told the parents their child would not be viable. Lastly, there are literally thousands of couples who would gladly adopt any other unwanted child ie rape incest etc.
Your pro-abortion diatribe is exactly what’s been haunting me for the past “indiscretion” regarding human life. Those unborn children have as much right to life as you or I do. If you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t do the deed. Or, take precautions before the life, with a right to live, takes root in your womb (I assume you’re female). Who the hell can say a child’s life will be short and “full of suffering”? If you think you can, maybe you should be Pelosi’s advisor. The objection is for public funds to be used for your own indiscretion, not the child’s. Liberals like you need to stop trying to dictate the right to life for children.
Frosted, don’t worry. There is no Hell. It is all in your mind.
How do you feel about the military? Are you doing everything you can to prevent precious lives from enlisting and possibly getting themselves killed or killing thousands of others? Or do they not matter because they aren’t fetuses and not connected to your own experience? Feel guilty if you have to, but that doesn’t give you a right to project your guilt and your religion on others.
Why would you go to Hell for not doing everything you can to stop abortions? Are you doing everything you can to prevent school shootings? Are you doing everything you can to prevent the miscarriages of poverty-stricken women due to lack of prenatal care?
This whole thing is insane. All these fetus nuts don’t really care about life or they would be spending as much time and energy on cancer research and a million other things. Such hypocrisy. People are so emotional. Let it go.
If you want to stop abortions, don’t ban it. Fight for funding for education, birth control, and prenatal care. Tell people your story and help to give them options, such as help with prenatal care and adoption procedures. Maybe that will help you heal.
Abortions in Colorado went way down when they provided free birth control. Much like a fetus up to about 20 weeks, it is a no-brainer.
Again, my objection is to publicly fund abortions. I have no interest in preventing mothers from taking action to “protect” themselves. As for the military, they are making their own decisions to join. No one is making them now. Fetuses are without that self made decision to end their life.
We should all be against all forms of murder be it abortion, school shootings, drug related, whatever. It really is very cognitively inconsistent to pick and choose which murder is acceptable. None of them are. I do though agree with your free birth control stand.
Good grief that argument is so cognitively inconsistent. Once you conceive a child it is no longer about your body as there is now someone else’s body as well. Take a freshman level college biology class. It is so scientifically obvious life begins at conception. Certainly there are tragic circumstances but they are very rare and should be treated within serious medical protocol when someone’s life is truly at stake. Abortion is not birth control, not a procedure of convenience and it is heinous to consider it as such. It is murder and my heart breaks for the mothers and fathers that have lost children this way.
You are, of course, the expert on your own opinions Elizabeth. However, “murder” is defined explicitly as the killing of a human being and not the killing of “life.”
It’s important to be talking about the same things IMO.
Frosted, in the theological tradition and worldview that believes in hell (which I happen to subscribe to), all of us have done unpardonable things that warrant hell, in our hearts if not in action. I know I have, though most would look at my life and say it’s pretty squeaky clean. The foil to that is grace, which is embodied in an innocent person taking another’s just punishment. I believe that Jesus did that very thing for you as well as me, so while hell, guilt, and the fear of it are real, it’s not something you earn your way out of or could have in the first place. That’s justice and mercy fulfilled, that evil is punished but mercy still extended.
Titus 3:5-7 King James Version (KJV)
“5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.“
I hope that comforts you. I’m on the Board of a pregnancy resource center here in Alaska, and my earnest hope is not only to prevent babies from being aborted, but to reach those loving with abortion regret with comfort and hope of healing. I’m sure others in this thread will scoff at what I say—I’m not here to engage with them, just to let you know you haven’t lost the hope of heaven.
ECG,
Thank you. God bless.
Thank you! Amen!
Thank you for sharing about your loss. We were fed a lie with Roe-Wade and that lie has been ironclad protected. It is time to reveal the prove bias ‘naked emperor’. Your voice has tremendous clout as you have walked the very painful road.
Imagine you were knocked out and woke up in a hospital bed hooked to a stranger.
The stranger is suffering from a strange wasting disease and therefore is connected to you and needs to life off of your bodily systems to live. If disconnected the stranger will die. After 9 months the stranger can be disconnected.
During the nine months your body will suffer from back problems, pain, nausea, vomiting, and you are at risk of anemia, UTI, mental heath conditions, Hypertension, diabetes, Obesity, and prone to infection. Finally there is a 20% chance that you will die. Afterward you may have other issues arise as well.
During this time you are still expected to go to school, work, and all other obligations.
You were also told that once you’re disconnected you’ll have to financially support the stranger for the next 18 years and possibly longer.
This is what you are saying is ok. That another woman is expected to do this without choice.
It’s monstrous and barbaric.
A zygote is not is human life though. 25% will miscarry often without a woman knowing. If the real goal was to protect life than children would be offered healthcare regardless of what their child’s parents occupations will be. There would be easily accessible food for all children as well as all other necessities to provide for a child like housing and stability. But there is not. That is all foisted upon a woman.
And the argument that there are people who would adopt that child is ridiculous because over 100,000 children sit with in the adoption system waiting to be adopted of the 400,000 in the foster care system. Of that 400k total 23,000 age out of that and are instantly homeless. 7:10 of the woman will be pregnant before age 21. Of the 100,000 up for adoption only around 7% are adopted. Adoption isn’t a solution it’s a lie.
Harry,
Your modern “academic” opinions are part of the problem, in my opinion. Comparing human unborn children, with the term “zygotes”, to an amoeba or other non-aware species is what’s abominable. Not an opinion that wants to discuss those unborn human beings. There’s quite a difference there. Your opinion is your opinion. Your “reasoning” has lots of holes in it, to me. Quit trying to sway enough opinions to make mine look stupid. It’s not. I have as much right to it (opinion) as you or any other pro-abortion “academic”.
Mr. Purcell have you been pregnant?
First of all, typically a child is not conceived while one is sleeping. Conception is not passive nor does on contract a child like a virus. A child is conceived through the actions of two involved parties. Typically. I’m not speaking about rape here, simply the standard process of conceiving a child. Once the two parties have engaged consensually and conceived, it is no longer just about either of them. There is another life that their actions, and I believe God’s will, created. At that point they are no longer ethically or spiritually or physically making decisions just about their body. As for the horrors of pregnancy you describe as if you are describing cancer – none of your description describes my pregnancy experiences.
Mr. Purcell,
Thank you for providing hard facts around this very emotional issue. It’s not an easy decision but it’s mine alone to make. And I’ll be damned if I will play host to anything unwillingly. Oh how I wish men could get pregnant, they would give abortions away like…viagra.!
Sadly, when Roe was made law, science knew that at conception a new person with distinct DNA was alive and a developing human just like the rest of us, We are all developing humans at various stages of development. I was a student of embryology at that time and it was clear that the fetus is a human person.
Why do all the Pro-choice women act as if they are part of a forced breeding program ? Not unlike dogs that are put into an enclosure to mate , with no choice. Funny thing is ,animals don’t walk into abortion clinics and spread their legs and have their unborn burned and ripped apart and sucked out of them.
I wonder how many Pro-choicers would like to be forced to pay for pre-born puppies and kitties to be treated in this fashion??
Not to make light of a miscarriage, but in many ways that would be “God” making the decision to abort. Shall we rail against “God’s” injustice?
I had my milk cow abort her calf, the calf was about the size of a cat, all the features formed, but hairless. I don’t know why this happened, it did.
I go all the time to the book, “Cider House Rules” for a look at the right and wrong and just is of abortion. I as a man have no right to say what might have a woman make the decision to have an abortion. I have been there when they had to make that decision. I know the sex instinct and passion is very strong, far stronger than education and shame. I fall in the pro choice camp as the lesser of two evils.
Comments are closed.