 |
Rep. Danny
McCormick, R-Oil City, speaks on his bill, HB813, concerning abortion
during legislative session, Thursday, May 12, 2022, in the House
Chambers of the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La. (Hillary
Scheinuk/The Advocate via AP) |
A
businessman turned state representative from rural Oil City, Louisiana, and a
Baptist pastor banded together earlier this year on a radical mission.
They were
adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal
consequences as one who drowns her baby.
Under a bill
they promoted, pregnant people could face murder charges even if they were
raped or doctors determined the procedure was needed to save their own life.
Doctors who attempted to help patients conceive through in-vitro fertilization,
a fertility treatment used by millions of Americans, could also be locked up
for destroying embryos, and certain contraception such as Plan B would be
banned.
“The taking
of a life is murder, and it is illegal,” state Rep. Danny McCormick told a
committee of state lawmakers who considered the bill in May, right after the
Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.
“No
compromises, no more waiting,” Brian Gunter, the pastor who suggested McCormick
be the one to introduce the legislation, told the committee.
 |
Louisiana
State Rep. Danny McCormick, pastor Brian Gunter and attorney Bradley
Pierce (right to left) urged state lawmakers to move their bill, HB 813,
out of committee earlier this year. |
Only four
people spoke against the bill during the committee meeting— all women. They
pleaded with the lawmakers to grasp the gravity of the proposed restrictions,
which went farther than any state abortion law currently on the books, and
warned of unintended consequences.
“We need to
take a deep breath,” said Melissa Flournoy, a former state representative who
runs the progressive advocacy group 10,000 Women Louisiana. She said the bill
would only punish women and that there wasn’t enough responsibility being
placed on men.
But in the
end, only one man and one woman, an Independent and a Democrat, voted against
it in committee. Seven men on the committee, all Republicans, voted in favor of
the bill, moving it one step closer to becoming law.
Men at the
helm
A faction of
self-proclaimed “abolitionists” are seeking to make abortion laws more
restrictive and the consequences of having the procedure more punitive than
ever before.
Emboldened
by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, they say they will not be satisfied until
fetuses are given the same protections as all US citizens — meaning that if
abortion is illegal, then criminal statutes should be applied accordingly.
While major national anti-abortion groups say they do not support criminalizing
women, the idea is gaining traction with certain conservative lawmakers. And
the activists and politicians leading the charge are nearly always men, CNN
found.
This year,
three male lawmakers from Indiana attempted to wipe out existing abortion
regulations and change the state’s criminal statutes to apply at the time of
fertilization. In Texas, five male lawmakers authored a bill last year that
would have made getting an abortion punishable by the death penalty if it had
gone into law. A state representative in Arizona introduced legislation that
included homicide charges — saying in a Facebook video that anyone who
undergoes an abortion deserves to “spend some time” in the Arizona “penal
system.” And a male Kansas lawmaker proposed a bill that would amend the
state’s constitution to allow abortion laws to pass without an exception for
the life of the mother.
While most
in the anti-abortion movement believe that human life begins at conception,
“abolitionists” are particularly uncompromising in how they act on their
beliefs — comparing abortion to the Holocaust and using inflammatory terms such
as “slaughter” and “murder” to describe a medical procedure that most Americans
believe should be legal in all or most cases.
Bradley
Pierce, the attorney who helped draft the Louisiana bill, said his organization
has been involved with many of the “abolition” bills that have been introduced
in more than a dozen states. All of this proposed legislation would make it
possible for women seeking abortions to face criminal charges.
An
overwhelming majority of Americans said in a Pew Research Center poll they
don’t believe men should have a greater say on abortion policy, but that is
what is happening. Experts told CNN that the male dominance fits within the
anti-abortion movement’s current framing as being focused on “fetal personhood”
and “fetal rights” as opposed to maternal rights.
Eric Swank,
an Arizona State University professor who has studied gender differences in
anti-abortion activists, said his research found that while men aren’t
necessarily more likely to consider themselves to be “pro-life” than women,
they “are more willing to take the adamant stance of no abortion under any
conditions.”
The most
restrictive bills, which don’t include explicit “life of the mother” exceptions
and would charge those who receive abortions with homicide, have failed to make
it to the full vote needed for passage. But others that prohibit abortions even
in cases of rape and incest have taken hold in around a dozen states, including
Missouri, Alabama and Tennessee, according to Guttmacher Institute.
Those laws,
CNN found, were also overwhelmingly passed into law by male legislators. While
female Republicans almost always voted in favor of the legislation, gender
imbalances within state legislatures, as well as the fact that female lawmakers
were more likely to be Democrats, fueled the voting gap. And male Democratic
lawmakers were far more likely than female Democrats to cross the aisle to vote
in favor of the abortion bans, according to CNN’s analysis.
The Texas
Heartbeat Act, for example, outlawed nearly all abortions in the state when it
criminalized the procedure as soon as a heartbeat could be detected — as early
as six weeks of pregnancy. While men made up nearly three quarters of the 177
lawmakers who voted, nearly 90% of those who voted in favor of the bill were
men.
Encouraging
‘sacrificial behavior’
Scott
Herndon, a bearded Idaho man and father of eight, once believed abortion was an
issue that should be discussed “between a woman and her physician.”
He remembers
watching the classic 80s movie, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” and being
relatively ambivalent about the fact that one of the characters received an
abortion. He didn’t become a Christian until 1996, the same year he drove his
pregnant girlfriend along the streets of San Francisco on his motorcycle. The
pregnancy was unexpected, but that life development, along with a newfound
religious practice, led Herndon to spend a lot of thinking about “the
miraculous nature of life.” Over the years he began to feel compelled to get
involved with the anti-abortion movement.
His daughter
is now 25, and he and his wife went on to have seven more children. A longtime
member of the Idaho Republicans, he told CNN he decided to run for state Senate
this year with a mission of fighting government encroachment. Herndon, who
touts his competitive shooting experience in high school and college, is a
staunch supporter of the right to bear arms and strongly opposes vaccine
mandates. He describes himself as a “true family-values conservative,” noting
that his sons help him with his home-building business while his five daughters
live on the family farm, milking cows, and raising chickens and pigs.
One of his
longterm goals if elected, he said, is to abolish abortion in the state.
“Success
depends on changing hearts and minds,” he said. “I liken the effort to Martin
Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement for desegregation and equal treatment
of African Americans.”
This
comparison is one that abortion rights activists take serious issue with.
“Let’s be clear: appropriating the word ‘abolition’ is particularly
contemptuous,” a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America said
in a statement to CNN. “That word is a symbol of freedom and this group wants
to put people behind bars for exercising their right to bodily autonomy.”
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Abortion rights demonstrators gathered outside the US Supreme Court after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. |
Herndon,
however, says women should embrace their instinctual “sacrificial behavior.”
“If a mother
is in a life raft with a child and there’s only enough food and water to save
one, I’m guessing most mothers would not throw their child overboard and drown
them,” he said in an interview with CNN when asked about medical circumstances
where a doctor may deem an abortion necessary to save a woman’s life, such as a
cancer diagnosis that requires aggressive treatment.
As part of
their efforts to abolish abortion, which is generally defined as the
termination of a pregnancy, Herndon and others in the anti-abortion movement
are attempting to redefine the term to the “intentional killing” of a fetus.
That way,
they claim, the lives of mothers could still be saved as long as doctors make
an equal attempt to save the fetus.
Gunter,
meanwhile, said he disagrees with the medical establishment and does not
believe abortion is ever medically necessary.
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Doctors point to a variety of medical situations where an abortion may be needed to protect a pregnant person's life. |
Medical and
legal experts told CNN this is a dangerous and inaccurate claim, saying there
are plenty of situations that could result in women dying or being put through
unnecessary bodily harm if explicit exceptions for the health and life of the
mother are not included in the laws regulating abortion.
Louise King,
a gynecologic surgeon and professor at Harvard Medical School, said the claims
are “disingenuous at best and intentional dissemination of misinformation at
worst” and questioned why they “can’t simply trust medical professionals to do
their job.”
“Most of
these ‘arguments’ are attempts to impose a minority religious view on the
majority of our citizens,” she said. “This is not a matter of belief or
opinion. This is a highly inappropriate way to use our legislative system.”
An immediate
abortion may be needed if a pregnant person’s water breaks before 20 weeks,
King said, or when patients have pre-existing conditions that could lead to
heart or liver failure or they need aggressive treatment for a disease like
cancer that would severely harm — if not destroy — the fetus. An “equal attempt
to save the fetus” would require putting the life of the pregnant person at
risk,” she said, adding that it is also not the well established standard of
care.
Doctors also
note that abortion bans take away a patient’s ability to make decisions about
their own health and pregnancy, sometimes forcing them to endure pregnancies
and deliveries of fetuses that will not survive.
Stories like
this are already making headlines as laws become increasingly restrictive. In
some cases, doctors are already afraid to perform abortions in cases where a
mother’s health is at risk, even with so called “life of the mother” exceptions
in place. In Texas, one woman learned that her baby had heart, lung, brain,
kidney and genetic defects and would either be stillborn or die within minutes
of birth. At the same time, doctors warned her that carrying the baby to term
threatened her own life, but she says she was still refused an abortion by
doctors who said it could run afoul of the state’s strict six-week abortion
ban. She ultimately drove 10 hours to a New Mexico abortion clinic to undergo
the procedure. “I’m still so angry and hurt about it that I can hardly see
straight,” she wrote on Facebook the next day.
Another
Texas woman spoke out about being forced to carry her dead fetus for weeks
after suffering a miscarriage. In Louisiana, a woman carrying a fetus without a
skull was reportedly not allowed to get an abortion, while another was reportedly
denied an abortion and instead forced into hours of labor when her water broke
at 16 weeks, long before the fetus was viable.
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Idaho State Senate candidate Scott Herndon supports a total abortion ban in the state. |
Herndon
agreed that the health of the pregnant woman should be considered, but he
worries that the medical community automatically prioritizes the mother’s life
and does not treat the fetus as a person until birth, saying this needs to
change. And he said that while locking up women is not his objective, it only
makes sense for homicide charges to apply to a woman who chooses to undergo an
abortion if fetuses are given equal protections under the law.
As chair of
his county’s Republican Party, he attended the Idaho Republican convention in
July and proposed an official change to the party platform in support of an
amendment to the state constitution that would “strengthen” the rights of
fetuses.
After it
easily passed the vote, a fellow Republican delegate took the floor with a
proposal that was not met with the same support. She wanted to make sure an
exception was included in the party platform for abortions needed for a woman’s
physical and mental health, Herndon recounted.
A heated
debate ensued, with Herndon describing the proposal as not carefully crafted
and unnecessary. The proposal was ultimately rejected by a margin of nearly 3
to 1, according to news reports. The Idaho Republican Party did not respond to
requests for comment.
No
exceptions
Back in
2019, a bill that would criminalize abortion even in cases of rape and incest
was placed in front of Alabama’s legislature — a move so extreme that a number
of high-profile Republicans initially said it went too far.
When the
bill reached the state Senate, 25 male legislators voted on party lines to
enact it, and the state’s female governor signed it into law.
A federal
judge blocked it from taking effect, but it had an immediate domino effect as
other states followed suit. Most of the laws, including near-total abortion
bans known as “trigger” laws and six-week “heartbeat” bills, weren’t able to
take effect at the time either, but they are being implemented across the
country now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
This wave of
unprecedented restrictions shows the power of the anti-abortion movement and
how the Republican Party has shifted to appeal to a small but fervent group of
voters, experts said.
“The idea
that a fully human life with full moral worth begins at conception is not an
extreme view in the pro-life movement,” said Ziad Munson, a sociology professor
at Lehigh University who has researched the movements on both sides of the
abortion debate. “The real issue is the degree of power the movement has over
the Republican Party in the political arena, where such viewpoints have – at
least until recently – been outside the mainstream.”
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Anti-abortion protesters gathered at the Indiana State Capitol this summer. |
And in
recent years, a particular brand of Republican candidate has become more
prominent — one that touts the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen,
doesn’t trust science and consider themselves to be Christian Nationalists,
said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.
“Even a more
moderate candidate may feel that they have to toe the line in what the
anti-abortion movement is saying, and what (the movement) wants is changing,”
said Ziegler, who has studied the anti-abortion movement’s influence on US
politics. “So who you are catering to if you’re the Republican Party is
changing.”
As a result,
she said, what would have previously been considered a disqualifying stance on
abortion for most voters is one of the issues now being used by a growing
number of Republican candidates for state and federal office in the hopes of
securing their party’s nomination.
During the
primary season earlier this year, two of the leading Republican candidates for
governor of Pennsylvania said in a debate that they support banning abortion
under any circumstances, including if the mother’s life is at risk. “I don’t
give way to exceptions,” said Doug Mastriano, who will be on the ticket in
November to succeed incumbent Democratic governor Tom Wolf, who has vetoed a
number of abortion bans passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature.
Men running
for a number of statewide offices in Georgia have also vocalized their support
of total abortion bans. “There’s no exception in my mind,” former football star
Herschel Walker, a Republican who is running for the US Senate, told reporters.
Mastriano
and Walker have not expressed support for prosecuting women who have abortions.
They did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
While an
overwhelming majority of Americans support legalized abortion when a woman’s
life or health is at risk, Ziegler said the disappearing “life of the mother”
exception stems from a deep distrust of both women, science and the medical
establishment. The new focus on punishing women for undergoing abortions — as
seen in several bills recently proposed — is also only likely to intensify, she
said. As abortion providers close up shop in states with bans, it is going to
become increasingly difficult to charge doctors if women travel to other states
for the procedure.
“That’s
going to make it more appealing to punish women,” Ziegler said.
‘Abolitionist,
not pro-life’
For pastor
Gunter in Lousiana, the “pro-life establishment” is not taking a hard enough
stand against abortion.
He told CNN
he doesn’t think someone can be truly “pro-life” while also believing that
abortion is acceptable in certain circumstances. He said he will support
nothing short of an all-out abortion ban with homicide charges and that unlike
some of his peers, he refuses to sacrifice his principles for political
reasons.
Gunter, who
“grew up in church in diapers” and is now in his 30s, said in a recent speech
that he once believed that opposing abortion simply meant voting for “pro-life”
candidates. But when a seminary professor invited him and other men to spread
the gospel outside an abortion clinic in 2008, he said everything changed.
 |
Pastor Brian
Gunter said he approached Rep. Danny McCormick about the Louisiana bill
that included homicide charges for women who receive abortions. |
That day, he
said he watched 15 women go inside the clinic and “murder their children.” One
of them, Gunter said, couldn’t have been older than 13 and he believed she was
being forced to undergo the procedure by her mother.
“She’s a
child, and her mother pulled her into that clinic,” said Gunter. “That day
changed my life. I went home, and I was newly married… (my wife) was pregnant
with our first child. I’d been seeing ultrasound pictures of my son and I
thought to myself ‘My God, someone killed a child just like my son, same age as
my son, looks like my son. How can they do that?”
After that,
he says he began confronting women as they entered abortion clinics every week.
And in an attempt to create more sweeping change, he decided to get involved
politically. He said he approached Rep. McCormick, who did not respond to CNN’s
requests for comment, earlier this year about the Louisiana bill that ended up
making waves across the country. It even sparked outrage from the largest
anti-abortion group in the state — one that Gunter said he had worked for but
recently parted ways with because he felt it wasn’t doing enough to outlaw
abortion.
Gunter’s
impassioned plea at the committee hearing in May was met with applause, and the
vote in favor of moving the bill to the full House ultimately came down to a
group of state lawmakers that included a former law enforcement officer, a
criminal defense and personal injury attorney and an entrepreneur who makes a
living designing “man caves” and selling game room furniture.
 |
Anti-abortion
"abolitionists" gathered at the Louisiana State Capitol in support of a
bill that would charge pregnant people who receive abortions with
murder. |
Lawmakers
then gathered on the House floor to debate the bill while dozens of supporters
gathered outside the chambers in what resembled a church service, reciting
Bible passages and swaying together while singing hymns such as “Amazing
Grace.” Jeff Durbin, an Arizona-based pastor and head of a Christian production
company Apologia Studios, which has more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube,
emceed and live-streamed the event. Durbin, who once played Michelangelo and
Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and became fervently
religious after overdosing on ecstasy, is now “unapologetically seeking to
criminalize and eliminate all forms of abortion without exception.” He did not
respond to requests for comment.
He and five
other men addressed the crowd at the state capitol, citing proverbs and
describing women who get abortions as murderers.
“We have… a
righteous bill that punishes those who choose to murder their children,” T.
Russell Hunter, the founder of anti-abortion group Free the States, yelled into
the microphone, saying that any truly “pro-life” law should hold pregnant women
accountable for their decisions — not just the medical providers. “Abortionists
do not wake up and go out into the culture looking for children to kill;
mothers bring their babies to them to be murdered. They are guilty…they have
murdered their children under the color of law and the Lord God hates it.”
Hunter’s
group describes itself as “abolitionist, not pro-life” — echoing Gunter’s
argument that many in the movement are compromising on their values. “While
many who call themselves pro-life agree with us that abortion is murder,” Free
the States writes on its website, “abortion has not been opposed by the
pro-life political establishment in a manner consistent with its being murder.”
Hunter told CNN this movement is not “about wanting to punish women or
something silly like that,” and that anyone involved in the decision to terminate
a pregnancy should face criminal charges — including fathers.
“Pray for
the legislators here,” Durbin, who also runs End Abortion Now, said at the
capitol rally.
But this
time, the prayers went unfulfilled.
Inside the
House chamber, one of seven men to initially vote in favor of the proposed
legislation, Rep. Alan Seabaugh, a Republican who describes himself as
“pro-life,” apologized for his vote. He said he believed the bill was
unconstitutional, “makes criminals out of women.” Other Republican lawmakers
and anti-abortion advocates in the state also came out hard against the bill,
saying it went too far — including a state representative who said her grandson
wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The bill
never went to a full vote.
It was the
first time such an extreme anti-abortion measure made it out of any state
committee, however, and the vocal opposition has not deterred Gunter. He plans
to work with McCormick, the Louisiana lawmaker, to introduce a similar bill
next year.
Momentum, he
told CNN, is only building in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
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