No exceptions
Back in 2019, a bill that would criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest was placed in front of Alabama’s legislature — a move so extreme that a number of high-profile Republicans initially said it went too far.
When the bill reached the state Senate, 25 male legislators voted on party lines to enact it, and the state’s female governor signed it into law.
A federal judge blocked it from taking effect, but it had an immediate domino effect as other states followed suit. Most of the laws, including near-total abortion bans known as “trigger” laws and six-week “heartbeat” bills, weren’t able to take effect at the time either, but they are being implemented across the country now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
This wave of unprecedented restrictions shows the power of the anti-abortion movement and how the Republican Party has shifted to appeal to a small but fervent group of voters, experts said.
“The idea that a fully human life with full moral worth begins at conception is not an extreme view in the pro-life movement,” said Ziad Munson, a sociology professor at Lehigh University who has researched the movements on both sides of the abortion debate. “The real issue is the degree of power the movement has over the Republican Party in the political arena, where such viewpoints have — at least until recently — been outside the mainstream.”
And in recent years, a particular brand of Republican candidate has become more prominent — one that touts the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, doesn’t trust science and consider themselves to be Christian Nationalists, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.
“Even a more moderate candidate may feel that they have to toe the line in what the anti-abortion movement is saying, and what (the movement) wants is changing,” said Ziegler, who has studied the anti-abortion movement’s influence on US politics. “So who you are catering to if you’re the Republican Party is changing.”
As a result, she said, what would have previously been considered a disqualifying stance on abortion for most voters is one of the issues now being used by a growing number of Republican candidates for state and federal office in the hopes of securing their party’s nomination.
During the primary season earlier this year, two of the leading Republican candidates for governor of Pennsylvania said in a debate that they support banning abortion under any circumstances, including if the mother’s life is at risk. “I don’t give way to exceptions,” said Doug Mastriano, who will be on the ticket in November to succeed incumbent Democratic governor Tom Wolf, who has vetoed a number of abortion bans passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature.
Men running for a number of statewide offices in Georgia have also vocalized their support of total abortion bans. “There’s no exception in my mind,” former football star Herschel Walker, a Republican who is running for the US Senate, told reporters.
Mastriano and Walker have not expressed support for prosecuting women who have abortions. They did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
While an overwhelming majority of Americans support legalized abortion when a woman’s life or health is at risk, Ziegler said the disappearing “life of the mother” exception stems from a deep distrust of both women, science and the medical establishment. The new focus on punishing women for undergoing abortions — as seen in several bills recently proposed — is also only likely to intensify, she said. As abortion providers close up shop in states with bans, it is going to become increasingly difficult to charge doctors if women travel to other states for the procedure.
“That’s going to make it more appealing to punish women,” Ziegler said.
‘Abolitionist, not pro-life’
For pastor Gunter in Lousiana, the “pro-life establishment” is not taking a hard enough stand against abortion.
He told CNN he doesn’t think someone can be truly “pro-life” while also believing that abortion is acceptable in certain circumstances. He said he will support nothing short of an all-out abortion ban with homicide charges and that unlike some of his peers, he refuses to sacrifice his principles for political reasons.
Gunter, who “grew up in church in diapers” and is now in his 30s, said in a recent speech that he once believed that opposing abortion simply meant voting for “pro-life” candidates. But when a seminary professor invited him and other men to spread the gospel outside an abortion clinic in 2008, he said everything changed.
Pastor Brian Gunter said he approached Rep. Danny McCormick about the Louisiana bill that included homicide charges for women who receive abortions.
That day, he said he watched 15 women go inside the clinic and “murder their children.” One of them, Gunter said, couldn’t have been older than 13 and he believed she was being forced to undergo the procedure by her mother.
“She’s a child, and her mother pulled her into that clinic,” said Gunter. “That day changed my life. I went home, and I was newly married… (my wife) was pregnant with our first child. I’d been seeing ultrasound pictures of my son and I thought to myself ‘My God, someone killed a child just like my son, same age as my son, looks like my son. How can they do that?”
After that, he says he began confronting women as they entered abortion clinics every week. And in an attempt to create more sweeping change, he decided to get involved politically. He said he approached Rep. McCormick, who did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment, earlier this year about the Louisiana bill that ended up making waves across the country. It even sparked outrage from the largest anti-abortion group in the state — one that Gunter said he had worked for but recently parted ways with because he felt it wasn’t doing enough to outlaw abortion.
Gunter’s impassioned plea at the committee hearing in May was met with applause, and the vote in favor of moving the bill to the full House ultimately came down to a group of state lawmakers that included a former law enforcement officer, a criminal defense and personal injury attorney and an entrepreneur who makes a living designing “man caves” and selling game room furniture.
Anti-abortion “abolitionists” gathered at the Louisiana State Capitol in support of a bill that would charge pregnant people who receive abortions with murder.
Lawmakers then gathered on the House floor to debate the bill while dozens of supporters gathered outside the chambers in what resembled a church service, reciting Bible passages and swaying together while singing hymns such as “Amazing Grace.” Jeff Durbin, an Arizona-based pastor and head of a Christian production company Apologia Studios, which has more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, emceed and live-streamed the event. Durbin, who once played Michelangelo and Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and became fervently religious after overdosing on ecstasy, is now “unapologetically seeking to criminalize and eliminate all forms of abortion without exception.” He did not respond to requests for comment.
He and five other men addressed the crowd at the state capitol, citing proverbs and describing women who get abortions as murderers.
“We have… a righteous bill that punishes those who choose to murder their children,” T. Russell Hunter, the founder of anti-abortion group Free the States, yelled into the microphone, saying that any truly “pro-life” law should hold pregnant women accountable for their decisions — not just the medical providers. “Abortionists do not wake up and go out into the culture looking for children to kill; mothers bring their babies to them to be murdered. They are guilty…they have murdered their children under the color of law and the Lord God hates it.”
Hunter’s group describes itself as “abolitionist, not pro-life” — echoing Gunter’s argument that many in the movement are compromising on their values. “While many who call themselves pro-life agree with us that abortion is murder,” Free the States writes on its website, “abortion has not been opposed by the pro-life political establishment in a manner consistent with its being murder.” Hunter told CNN this movement is not “about wanting to punish women or something silly like that,” and that anyone involved in the decision to terminate a pregnancy should face criminal charges — including fathers.
“Pray for the legislators here,” Durbin, who also runs End Abortion Now, said at the capitol rally.
But this time, the prayers went unfulfilled.
Inside the House chamber, one of seven men to initially vote in favor of the proposed legislation, Rep. Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who describes himself as “pro-life,” apologized for his vote. He said he believed the bill was unconstitutional, “makes criminals out of women.” Other Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion advocates in the state also came out hard against the bill, saying it went too far — including a state representative who said her grandson wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The bill never went to a full vote.
It was the first time such an extreme anti-abortion measure made it out of any state committee, however, and the vocal opposition has not deterred Gunter. He plans to work with McCormick, the Louisiana lawmaker, to introduce a similar bill next year.
Momentum, he told CNN, is only building in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
I think it probably is and they will have a huge influence on GOP politicians because the more the party becomes a minority party of rural, right wing, white evangelicals, the more they will depend on the votes of these extremists.
This is patriarchal misogyny (and yes, many women sign on to that) and they are feeling their oats. These are the people who think the Supreme Court didn’t go far enough and they aren’t going to stop.
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