Growing Contingency of Attorneys Are Refusing To Enforce New Pro-Life Laws
Attorneys from red-leaning states have joined a growing contingency of attorneys from 38 other states to defy recent abortion laws.
In recent months, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Kentucky, Utah and Arkansas have all passed pro-life laws.
However, in a joint statement posted online, 42 attorneys say they will not prosecute abortion doctors or nurses who perform the procedure in states that recently passed many “heartbeat” laws.
Joining the list are attorneys from Alabama, Ohio and Georgia.
“As elected prosecutors, we are committed to protecting the safety and well-being of all individuals in our communities. We are also charged with protecting the integrity of our justice system and upholding the Constitution and rule of law,” the statement read.
“As elected prosecutors with charging discretion, we choose not to prosecute individuals pursuant to these deeply concerning laws.”
The prosecutors said they have a responsibility to uphold the U.S. Constitution, as well as constitutions from other states and that the “broad restrictions in the laws passed by these states appear to be unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade.”
However, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro wrote in a CSN News column there is no “right to an abortion” in the Constitution.
Shapiro said, “The court extended that right to privacy to include the killing of a third party, an unborn human life — and overrode state definitions of human life in the process.”
Additionally, according to the recently passed pro-life law in Alabama, an amendment passed in November 2018 “made it clear that the Constitution of Alabama of 1901 does not include a right to an abortion or require the funding of abortions using public funds.”
The statement from prosecutors that criticized recent abortion laws said that “many of these new enactments are ambiguous or silent as to whom they would hold criminally responsible, leaving open the potential for criminalizing patients, medical professionals, healthcare providers, and possibly others who assist in these medical procedures.”
They go as far as to say that a woman can even “face criminal liability under these statutes.”
However, this appears to be highly unlikely.
The recent fetal heartbeat bill that was passed in Alabama stated, “No woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed shall be criminally or civilly liable.”
It goes on to read: “Relating to abortion; to make abortion and attempted abortion felony offenses except in cases where abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother; to provide that a woman who receives an abortion will not be held criminally culpable or civilly liable for receiving the abortion.”
Additionally, the law states that neither abortion doctors nor those who help perform the procedure will be held criminally responsible if there is a “serious health risk to the child’s mother.”
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