Recently filed legislation by State Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R-Trinity) to treat abortion as murder in Alabama comes amid a wave of similar bills gaining momentum in multiple states nationwide.
Yarbrough filed House Bill 518 (HB518), also known as the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, on Thursday. The legislation is aimed at providing "equal protection" under the law for unborn children who perish due to abortion. HB518 would permit criminal prosecution for abortions in the state with several exceptions. Under the bill, prosecutions where the victim is an unborn child "must be treated the same as if the unborn child were born alive."
The bill would also remove the current state law that exempts women from criminal prosecution if they procure an abortion.
While such a measure is ambitious and will undoubtedly face challenges in the legislative process, similar measures have been tried over the years and are now gaining traction in several states.
Yarbrough filed similar legislation in 2023. However, the bill never even received a committee hearing.
This year, Yarbrough's bill has more House cosponsors and national momentum as advocacy groups are making headway in other state legislatures. Through legislative means, the various groups try to draw attention to a perceived inconsistency with pro-life laws: giving lip service to abortion as murder but recoiling from actively treating it as such in the legal system.
Pastor Jeff Durbin is a pastor out of Phoenix, Arizona, who operates the abortion abolition organization End Abortion Now (EAN).
Durbin has worked with several grassroots efforts in over a dozen states to introduce similar "equal protection" legislation. According to Durbin, who appeared in Alabama to support Yarbrough's 2023 efforts, the bevy of bills directly results from local churches mobilizing to impact their legislatures.
Most recently, Durbin appeared before the Georgia legislature during a public hearing for an equal protection bill.
Durbin's work does not end in Georgia. He says nearly two dozen bills of equal protection have been filed in various states, with more potential than in previous years.
"My understanding is that over 20 bills of abolition have been submitted this last session or are coming in the next few weeks and are about to be filed," Durbin said. "States like Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Maine, Alabama obviously, Ohio, Kentucky And North Dakota, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana and Missouri I believe. So, it's been happening across the country, and the number of legislators in support is increasing."
He continued, "We have two dozen bills of protection potentially happening in the first session of 2025, and that's a dramatic turn in terms of a cultural change and mindset change that's happening across the country. Two examples of bills that just received hearing were in Georgia and North Dakota. There were multiple legislators in North Dakota in the hearing, arguing in favor of the bill and refusing the very poor arguments against the bill. In Georgia, almost 25 % of the House of Representatives were already on our bill as cosponsors or cosigners."
In June 2022, SCOTUS struck down Roe v. Wade, which claimed abortion was a constitutional right. After the SCOTUS decision, Alabama's near-total ban on abortion under the Alabama Human Life Protection Act (HLPA) of 2019 went into effect.
While some believe that Alabama's HLPA essentially killed the abortion industry in Alabama, Durbin and similarly-minded advocates believe it does not go far enough. Surprisingly, according to Durbin, his biggest opposition in filing bills across the nation has come from pro-life groups, which he refers to as the "pro-life establishment."
Durbin distinguishes between those who consider themselves pro-life as a matter of principle and the leadership in pro-life organizations that he accuses of trying to hamstring his and others' efforts to advance equal protection.
"When the pro-life establishment looks at a bill of equal protection and says, 'well, this criminalizes the conduct of unjust taking of a life of a child in the womb, with malice aforethought, and unjustifiably, that would lead to the woman also being a culprit that will be found as guilty, they will say, 'no we don't believe that. We don't believe that a woman should ever be seen as guilty of a crime for taking the life of a child in the womb.' Now, take that same child and put it outside the womb for 10 seconds, and they do believe that she should be criminally prosecuted. So it shows an inconsistency in their own thinking, and that is the formal creed or doctrine of the pro-life establishment."
Durbin credited the momentum of equal protection bills to the activities of local churches nationwide and boasted of the work of several other like-minded organizations.
One organization, Operation Save America (OSA), which joined Durbin and EAN in Alabama and last month in Georgia, has spearheaded local efforts nationwide.
"This year, we've been to Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Ohio," Said OSA Director Jason Storms. "There are also bills in Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas, and a few others. We're seeing a major shift in the pro-life movement. More and more people are signing on to support the principles of our bills."
For Storms and Durbin, equal protection bills are necessary to affirm the humanity of the unborn child while recognizing those who unjustly take the life of another deserve to face justice in the courts.
"Thousands of babies are still being killed in every single state in our country with legal immunity by giving mothers wholesale exemption from prosecution," Storms continued. "That has opened the door for the number-one means of killing children in the womb, which is chemical abortions, what Planned Parenthood calls 'self-managed abortions.' That is now closing in on 70% of all abortions in the country."
"In states like Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and others that passed bills that do recognize life at conception, that do have penalties for doctors who perform abortions, by giving the mothers total immunity, it's incentivizing self-managed abortions."
HB518 was placed in the House Health Committee, chaired by State Rep. Paul Lee (R-Dothan). However, the bill has not yet been placed on the calendar for debate.
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