Pregnant women could end up on “death row” by merely passing through Alabama due to the state’s abortion law, Bette Midler warned in an unhinged rant on Monday.
The left-wing actress posted the dire warning to her 1.64 million Twitter followers Monday, urging pregnant women to avoid Alabama “LIKE THE PLAGUE!”
“FEMALES!! Whatever you do #AvoidAlabama LIKE THE PLAGUE!” Bette Midler warned. “It’s 2019, but it’s the 1500s in Ala. You may be pregnant, which you might not know, something may happen, and you could end up on death row just for passing thru this moth-eaten state!”
The Alabama Senate passed what has been dubbed as the nation’s “strictest abortion” law earlier this year with a 25-6 vote. It essentially extends personhood to a child in the womb and was signed by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey in May. It outlines strict consequences for doctors who perform abortions, making it a felony in virtually all cases, unless the pregnancy is deemed to pose “a serious health risk” to the mother. There is no exception for cases or rape or incest, which account for a very small number of abortions. The bill’s co-sponsor Rep. Terri Collins (R-Decatur) said that an exception would have conflicted with their personhood argument.
“The reasoning is the same reasoning, Roe v. Wade was decided that the baby in the womb was not a person,” Collins explained. “So this bill bases its reasoning that the baby in the womb is a person. And we based it on the fact that in Alabama law, we currently consider the baby in the womb a person.”
“The biggest thing to attack it with is to say, ‘What, you’re not going to include rape and incest?’” she continued. “Well, how do we say, ‘The baby inside is a person unless they’re conceived in rape or incest’?
Midler’s warning is also fundamentally flawed, as the law focuses primarily on the provider of the abortion – not the pregnant woman.
Despite that, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit to block Alabama’s pro-life law in May.
Midler is not the only celebrity to spread misinformation about the pro-life laws sweeping the country. On Thursday, Cher falsely claimed that Georiga’s heartbeat law would imprison women who experience miscarriages.
Cher’s assertion is patently false. As Breitbart News reported:
However, while Georgia’s new Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act prohibits abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected — with exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is endangered – it will not imprison women who have either abortions or miscarriages.
Like Alabama’s law, Georgia’s law primarily focuses on those who perform abortions or intentionally seek to harm a pregnant woman’s unborn child.
“Georgia law is clear,” National Review’s David French explained. “While abortionists can be prosecuted for performing unlawful abortions — and an attacker can spend the rest of his life in jail for killing a woman’s unborn child — Georgia’s heartbeat bill cannot be used to prosecute a woman for ending her own pregnancy.”