Alabama’s lawmakers are doing their part to protect unborn children from the abortionists’ poisons, suction tubes, and forceps, but as anticipated they are receiving no end of calumny and hate for their efforts. One lie that is particularly popular is that this law is another example of white men trying to end abortion as part of their “war on women”.
Never mind the fact that the governor who singed the legislation into law is a woman. Or the fact that many pro-life leaders, like Abby Johnson, are women. No—the members of the Alabama Senate who voted for the law are all white men, which is more than enough fuel for the calumnious fire.
On “The Daily” podcast, in soft and troubled tones, the NYTimes host asked the Alabama lawyer instrumental in crafting the bill if he was concerned that only white men voted for the legislation. CNN ran with the headline “25 men voted to advance most restrictive abortion ban in the country. The female governor signed it.” Leslie Jones on SNL, scowling, expressed her anger about the makeup of the senators who voted for the legislation: “Look at em. ALL MEN”—to which the audience compliantly booed loudly. “When women have a choice, women have FREEDOM,” she said, “This really is a war on women.” CBS reported: “Alabama just criminalized abortions – and every single yes vote was cast by a white man.”
Except it’s not true that only white men voted for the legislation. Yes, the Senators who voted for the law are all men. But before the law came to the Senate, it was passed by the Alabama House of Representatives. While most of the Representatives who voted for the bill were men, no fewer than 6 women also voted for the bill.
It just so happens that all the women on the Alabama Senate are also Democrats. It is not that they are women, but that they are Democrats that is the reason they did not vote yes to save unborn children from oathbreaking doctors who would tear them limb from limb.
It is not being female that determines one’s willingness to end unborn life. It is not being a man that predisposes one to protecting the unborn. Rather it is recognizing that the unborn are human persons worthy of protection. And, for all sorts of historical and philosophical reasons, one is far more likely to be able to see the humanity of the unborn, a fact provable by medical science and natural law without recourse to divine revelation, if one is a conservative Christian, which almost invariably means your name will be followed by an R, not a D.