Women in Alabama were shocked by Wednesday’s passage of the most restrictive abortion law in the country that does not even exclude victims of rape, who have expressed disgust at the move by Republican senators and Governor Kay Ivey.
“I have absolutely no words to describe the disgust that I feel and so many women have told me that they feel,” said Sam Blakey, a rape victim. “They’re scared. They’re angry. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We are seriously in fear for our lives as women in Alabama.”
Blakey also described the moment she found out she was pregnant with her rapist’s child as the worst moment of her life, saying it was an extremely traumatic experience which led to her suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Blakey stressed that if she had not been given the choice to abort, she would have probably committed suicide.
Last week, prior to the Senate’s vote, she also shared this experience and her views with lawmakers in an attempt to dissuade them from passing the law, saying also that if it had been enacted at the time she aborted, she would still have found a way to do it “somewhere, somehow.”
Blakey pleaded with Alabama senators not to take away this right from women, but they passed the legislation regardless. The only exception to their almost-total abortion ban are women whose health is at risk as a result of the pregnancy, or if the “unborn child has a lethal anomaly.”
Alabama Republicans also rejected an amendment by their Democratic colleagues to exempt victims of rape or incest.
The ban puts women’s lives at risk, a “sick and cruel” move to gain political points, said Blakey.
“I think it is sick and cruel that they are willing to endanger the lives of literally millions of women for some sort of political pat on the back or something, some sort of political advancement in their agendas,” she said, adding that the law will not stop girls and women from having abortions, just not in a safe manner.
“That is something that I don’t know if the Republicans know or care about. But that is the fact of the matter — that we will continue to have them (abortions). They are taking away our safety,” Blakey concluded.
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