Earlier this week, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, which would essentially ban all abortions – including for victims of sexual assault and incest – and punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.
This law not only attacks women’s fundamental rights, but it also does nothing to ensure the health and safety of victims of sexual violence. Instead of protecting and supporting victims of sexual assault and incest, it turns its back on them.
RALIANCE joins women and survivors across the country in speaking out against this attack on women and reasserting their legal rights to access reproductive health options without fear of punishment or retaliation.
While Alabama is the first to outright ban abortion, we can’t forget that Missouri, Ohio, Georgia and a growing number of other states are also introducing and/or passing laws that further restrict women’s access to legal and safe reproductive care.
Ebony Tucker, advocacy director at RALIANCE and the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, reflected on how misogyny is at the core of this dangerous trend in a joint op-ed for Refinery29 last month with Shaina Goodman, director of policy for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Tucker and Goodman said, “Deciding whether and when to have a child and whether or when to consent to sexual activity are both fundamentally about asserting autonomy over our own bodies. And both restrictions on abortion and the dismissal of sexual assault are about people in power — predominantly men — trying to strip away our dignity and roll back our march toward equality.”
It’s time to come together to speak out against the harmful laws that reinforce abortion restrictions and the pervasive culture that disregards women’s right to control their own bodies. Together we can end sexual violence in one generation.