Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
[A]lthough “As Alabama goes, so goes the nation” has never been a thing, nor should it be, it turns out that it’s precisely what will happen if Christian conservatives have their way, and at this point, it seems as though they very well might. The state’s recent criminalizing of abortion, which is still a legal procedure nationally, was designed to (eventually) force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision affirming a woman’s right to choose.
As usual, when church and state are cynically conflated, hypocrisy abounds and the “heart of Dixie” — a favorite Alabama sobriquet — proudly wallows in that particular morass as it has since the end of the Civil War, using biblical justification for all manner of indignity: KKK terrorists, segregationist Jim Crow laws, homophobia and owning, whipping and lynching black people. And now, under the guise of “religious freedom,” women will be forced to carry every pregnancy to term — rape or incest victims notwithstanding. Only last minute outrage resulted in the life of the prospective mother being considered.
When Gov. Kay Ivey signed the nation’s strictest abortion ban into law, she said that Alabamians’ deeply held belief was that “every life is precious and every life is a sacred gift from God.” Evidently, what God giveth, Ivey — with little compunction — taketh away, signing the death warrants of six condemned prisoners since taking office, their precious lives be damned. But the contradictions don’t stop there by any means, once a baby is born in Alabama, the true malevolence of the state’s right-to-lifers clarifies as focus shifts from their war on women to their war on children, particularly poor children.
Under the best of circumstances, being born in Alabama is one of the worst things that can happen to a child, that is if they get born at all. If the sanctimonious all-male, all-white state legislature legitimately gave a bleep about children, they might try addressing their state’s infant mortality rate, the worst in the nation in 2016, according to the Department of Public Health. As awful as this statistic might be, worse yet, officials appear unwilling to change it, refusing the opportunity to expand Medicaid coverage which could have provided health insurance for 300,000 low-income individuals.
Challenges abound for children in Alabama, consistently ranked at or near the bottom in a number of quality-of-life categories including health care, education, crime rate, and the opportunity available to succeed. It is estimated that 3.4 million Alabamians are illiterate, comprising almost 34 percent of adults in the western portion of the state. The high divorce rate also contributes to the instability faced by thousands of kids.
Although Alabama updated their sex education curriculum in April, those changes are largely cosmetic. When the state’s legally mandated offspring enter school, their sex education — which is not mandatory — remains based on an abstinence-only curriculum, resulting in one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation with several counties reporting sexually transmitted infection rates four times the national average.
Excising “homosexual conduct is a criminal offense” from the law or explaining the distinction between HIV and AIDS may drag the state (albeit kicking and screaming) into the modern world, they do little to address unwanted pregnancy, perpetuating the same generational cycle that finds women seeking abortions in the first place.
Apart from the long-range intention that the rest of the nation may be bound by Alabama’s law, the real barbarism is that the only limitation it will place on abortion will be among poor women. Those with means will always be able to obtain the procedure, traveling to other “legal” states or seeking out amenable physicians willing to risk the consequences of providing comprehensive care. Women on the lower end of the socio economic spectrum, desperate and destitute, will die, just as they did before Roe v. Wade became law four decades ago.
But as other, mostly Southern and Bible Belt-states followed Alabama’s lead, signing abortion restrictions into law in Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana, there was one notable exception. Vermont, ironically the first Northern state to offer troops in the Civil War, again threw down in opposition to the Confederacy, firmly siding with women by providing the broadest protection of reproductive rights in the country via law H.57. The Legislature also approved a constitutional amendment making reproductive freedom a fundamental right which will go to voters if it is approved by legislators elected in 2020.
While Alabama remains one of the most religious states with 90% of residents reporting their faith is very or somewhat important, Vermont ranks dead last in religiosity with at least as many atheists as believers. You’d think that those so devoted to their version of the Lord would establish a warm, loving, supportive community, inclusive of others like Jesus might. But you’d be wrong. In almost every category of livability factors, Alabama lands at or near the bottom while the freethinking North is consistently named one of the best places to live and raise kids in the country.
Embedded in Vermont’s abject denunciation of Alabama’s new civil war on women is a remarkable, centuries old tendency to lead, especially considering its small size. In addition to engaging civil wars old and new, Vermont was the first state to constitutionally outlaw slavery in 1777; legalize civil unions (2000) and marriage equality by statute in 2009; and to establish a school for the higher education of women by Emma Willard at Middlebury in 1814.
Other states would do well to follow Vermont’s example (again).
