Alabama Republicans Misinterpret Their Own Law In Order To Prosecute Women For Abortions

The Republican Attorney General of Alabama this week announced that women who take abortion pills, which were recently approved for distribution through the mail, can and likely will be prosecuted under Alabama law. The only problem these Republicans have is that their anti-abortion law only applies to abortion providers, NOT to the women who seek their services. So they've had to "re-interpret" a different law in order to prosecute women, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So last week, the federal government made it easier for women to get prescription abortion medication through the mail, which of course is especially helpful in states that have outlawed abortion. And the state of Alabama came out this week with their Republican Attorney General by the name of Steve Marshall. And Mr. Marshall said, Hey, listen, women, if you get these mail order abortion pills, we can prosecute you and send you to prison. Even though Marshall admitted the 2019 anti-abortion law that our governor Kay Ivy signed into law, um, it actually doesn't allow us to prosecute the women who get abortions. We can only prosecute the providers. So we can't actually get you under our anti-abortion law. So what he's had to do instead is he says, we've got this thing, this chemical endangerment law, it was signed a couple years ago. So what we're gonna do is if you get these mail order abortion pills, we're gonna proc, uh, prosecute you under that chemical endangerment law, which was put in place to punish people who expose children and even pregnant women, the unborn, um, to fumes from meth labs.

So we're gonna use the meth lab law to prosecute you for getting these prescription abortion pills through the mail. Now, the reason I point out that these are prescription, right? You can't just send in a request to get them and they just say, all right, here you go, have at it. Um, is because this chemical endangerment law women were being prosecuted under the chemical endangerment law for taking prescription drugs given to them by a doctor that ended up resulting in miscarriage. Women were being prosecuted for that. And then after that was made public thanks to a report by ProPublica, Alabama had to go back and like, okay, we're gonna revise the law. We're exempting prescription medication. That doesn't count. Well, uhoh looks like you got a problem there, attorney General Marshall, because your chemical endangerment law that you say we're gonna use that instead of the abortion law cuz we wrote that differently. But this one will still get you, you amended the law in 20, what year was it? 2015 saying that you can't prosecute women who take a prescription medication that terminates their pregnancy. So you are now saying that you are going to bastardize your own law that Republicans already had to amend just so you can punish these women who take these pills that the federal government made widely available last week. That's what's happening in the state of Alabama, an all out assault on women's reproductive freedom and reproductive health.

They are so desperate to prosecute you and put you behind bars that they're bastardizing their own laws just so they can stick it to you. Welcome to Alabama folks. Women leave your rights at the border.