Alabama has a problem with choice. Over the past four weeks, our representatives in the House have approved bill after bill designed to make Christian sexual norms the common law. House Bills 31, 490, 493, 489 and 494 make up this campaign, and their introduction should bring to the forefront of our minds the following question: How much will we tolerate from our legislators?
The four bills, together, will do the following: ban most abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy; double the waiting time for abortion-related procedures; give abusive parents more power to prevent their daughter’s abortion; and allow doctors to refuse to perform any abortion-related procedure without justification.
In practice, what this means is that many Alabamian women will miss one period, investigate and realize they have already passed the legal deadline to have an abortion. It means that medical professionals will be allowed to put their personal moral convictions before the Hippocratic Oath. And it means that many young Alabamian girls, having found that they are pregnant, will be forced to carry the fetus to term because their conservative parents say so.
By way of justifying HB 490, House Representative Mary Sue McClurkin said, “Life should be the choice that the woman chooses, because she has a choice before she ever participates in something that would lead to the life of a person.”
Some may think that McClurkin is simply encouraging her constituents to practice safe sex; however, a look at Alabama’s policies on sex education reveals otherwise. No Alabama public school is legally required to give any kind of sex ed, and any school that does teach sex ed is required to tell students that abstinence is “the expected social standard” for unwed school-age persons.
So when McClurkin chides her constituents for their “choices,” she appears to be referring to the simple act of sex. So for McClurkin and, apparently, a majority of our legislature, there are only two options a woman should have – abstain from sex or bear children.
For Christians to adhere to this dichotomy in their personal lives is all well and good, but McClurkin is trying to codify a specific set of religious mores into the common law, forcing members of all other religions to adhere to her personal spiritual convictions.
In other words, if our legislators don’t think sex outside of marriage is right, they shouldn’t do it. But they don’t have the right to deny the rest of us health care education, contraceptive resources and access to reproductive health care that the Supreme Court has guaranteed every citizen.
For every Alabamian who doesn’t think that the Christian model of abstinence should be written into law and forced on people of every religion, do the following. First, vote against Mary Sue McClurkin, Ed Henry, Kurt Wallace and Mike Jones, the authors of the bills in question. Second, support Patricia Todd as she sponsors a bill to remove exclusionary and subjective sex ed requirements from our schools.
And finally, remember the golden rule. If a (hypothetical) Jewish congressman tried to pass a tariff on pork, I doubt many of us would be pleased about it.
Nathan James is a junior majoring in public relations. His column runs weekly on Thursdays.
