Maybe it was inevitable. Perhaps this was where the so-called “War on Women” waged by Republicans was destined to lead, and Alabama Congresswoman Martha Roby just got here first. The second-term Republican Representative announced her intent to introduce legislation making it “not illegal to terminate abortion providers,” calling on her conservative colleagues to join her push for the forthcoming legislation protecting citizens from prosecution if they kill an abortion doctor "for moral or religious reasons."
Rep. Roby noted that recent months have seen unprecedented state laws to restrict abortion rights including building code regulations in Virginia and North Carolina, and fetal heartbeat measures making abortion illegal before some women even know they are pregnant in states such as North Dakota and Ohio. Not to be outdone, the Arizona legislature passed declaring life begins two weeks before conception.
“But we can do better,” she told the Montgomery Advertiser. “And Exodus Chapter 21 makes it clear: ‘When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, then you shall pay life for life.’”
Roby forged what many in Southern progressive circles term an “unholy alliance,” with a number of the Alabama tea party organizations, including Constitution’s Guardians which actually proclaims itself to be a “grassroots movement Glenn Beck loves,” that is comprised of “Americans willing to take a stand against the growing tide of Socialism.”
Ozark, Ala., resident June Shannon organized the non-partisan (some believe it skews Republican) Constitution’s Guardians while home schooling her four children and strongly supports Rep. Roby’s mission to strip abortion doctors of their current legal rights to not be murdered.
“On a daily basis these doctors deprive innocent children of their God-given right to exist,” Shannon declared. “Nobody is trying to mandate that any doctors must be hurt, any more than there is any law that mothers must kill their unborn children. But if it is not illegal to choose to kill your son and daughter, it sure shouldn’t be wrong to choose to defend and avenge the innocent and defenseless.”
Perhaps Rep. Roby’s previously best-known legislative effort was her 2011 supposed-attempt to revolutionize algebra by changing the legal definition of the mathematical constant pi to precisely 3, a fiction that proved to actually be an elaborate satirical ruse orchestrated by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Ms. Roby smiled and shook her head at the notion this could be a similar spoof.
“The pi thing was obviously just somebody’s dumb joke; I still don’t know how anyone managed to take it seriously. But this is real. People don’t joke about abortion, and the idea that I would endorse murder of abortion doctors is very believable; I am a Republican from Alabama, for Christ’s sake!”
Rep. Roby made it clear that any such law shielding doctor-killing would not be retroactive. Those in prison for the killing or attempted murder, such as Scott Roeder who is serving a 50-year sentence with no possibility of parole for the 2009 high-profile murder of Dr. George Tiller, would remain behind bars.