Abortion and Alabama: Pro-life hypocrisy in a kind and caring state

The last time Alabama was the lead story in the national news was when Republican judge Roy Moore was upset in his bid for the U.S. Senate, largely as a result of multiple allegations of sexual assault of teenage girls when he was a prosecutor in his 30’s.

Today, Alabama is topping the news again because of a law passed by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey that bans virtually all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest.

The irony is that both the political battle fought by Roy Moore and the one being waged today by his state’s representatives to outlaw abortion are emblematic of Alabama politicians’ hypocrisy.

Moore was a conservative Christian who was removed once from his position as Alabama’s chief justice for his refusal to remove a marble plaque with the Ten Commandments from the public courthouse, and again for telling probate judges to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision respecting gay marriage.

And when numerous women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct during his senate campaign, he still ran and lost, his personal history apparently outweighing his zealotry in the minds of the voters.

More recently, 140 Alabama House and Senate members, 85% of them men, sought to abolish abortion because, as they and the governor maintained, “every life is precious.”

Yet even the most cursory examination of Alabama’s legislative and political record shows it to be at the bottom of the list of all 50 states when it comes to practical and compassionate regard for “precious human life.”

Not to say that people from Alabama or the South are, by nature, hypocritical. I lived in Alabama for three years and found the opposite.

Southern charm is no myth. I have been a legal resident in four different states, and I’ve traveled through and written about dozens of others for the past 40 years. But the people of Alabama stood out above all others for their kindness, earnestness and empathy.

The very first week that my wife, Marianne, and I lived in southern Alabama, we were taken aback by a young couple in a coffee shop who overheard us worrying over a tropical storm that had formed and was headed in our direction.

When they sidled over and introduced themselves and took up the topic of the possible hurricane, I was on guard and suspicious of their motivation, having lived in Chicago most of my life.

But it soon became clear that these two people from a family of commercial fishermen were genuinely touched by our seeming anguish, as they proceeded to assuage our concerns, based on their long experience, and what turned out to be accurate and astute information.

In the months that followed, we were to learn that our first encounter with that native couple was not an anomaly. The people we got to know in our neighborhood, at the grocery and hardware store continually stunned us with their solicitousness, affection and sincerity. And this was in spite of our expectation that upon hearing our Yankee dialect they would give us a cold reception.

If it sounds as if I’m protesting too much, it’s because I wish to stress that my complaint is not at all with Alabama citizens, but with its politicians. For when it comes to the notion of care and genuine concern for “precious” lives, Alabama’s state government has a record of cold heartlessness.

For example, the same legislators, when availed of a concrete opportunity to safeguard “precious” human life, refused to expand Medicaid, thereby denying health care to thousands of young women of child-bearing age. Their rejection resulted in Alabama having one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation, with 7.6 infant deaths per thousand.

The same legislators voted on April 18 of this year to expand, rather than limit, the death penalty. In the last 50 years, Alabama has executed more men and women than 43 other states, and this latest action by its lawmakers’ will undoubtedly elevate even higher its reputation as killer-state. Has no one told them that pro-life means ending capital punishment, not increasing it?

The same legislators, in fact, have stymied nearly every effort to prolong, protect and improve “precious human life” by refusing to adequately fund health care, education, jobs training and pollution mitigation in poor regions, all of which is why the state ranks last or close to it in the following “precious” categories, according to U.S. News Report: 46^th in health care, 50^th in education, 45^th in economy, 38^th in infrastructure, and 49^th in life expectancy.

To reiterate, this abysmally low regard for human life is not a characteristic of the good people of Alabama, but of the passel of phonies in the state House, Senate and governor’s mansion.

The politicians claim to be motivated primarily by the sanctity of human life, but that is a lie. And pirating that claim to justify a ban on abortion is a lot like old Roy Moore’s smoke screen of proclaiming Old Testament devotion to win the votes of his religious base while ignoring and abusing the “precious” of the same constituency.

There are, I’m sure, pro-life advocates who are not lazy opportunists, seizing upon a feel-good cause that burnishes their image but costs them nothing. Just don’t go looking for them in the halls of government in Montgomery.

Former assistant professor of English at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, David McGrath is author of THE TERRITORY. mcgrathd@dupage.edu

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