The Abortion Bans | Fault Lines
In 2019, nine US states passed laws effectively banning abortion in the earliest stages of pregnancy, before many women even know they're pregnant. Fault Lines travelled to Alabama and Georgia, two states that passed the most extreme bans, to meet bill architects and lawmakers, clinics and patients on the front lines, and reproductive justice advocates fighting the bans in court. These new laws are part of a strategy to instigate a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalised abortion in 1973. Behind them is an emboldened anti-abortion movement that seeks to ban the procedure by granting legal rights to the unborn: fetuses, embryos, even fertilised eggs. Already 'fetal personhood' has been used to justify hundreds of criminal and civil cases against women. They've been charged with a variety of crimes related to their pregnancies, including murder. We meet one Alabama mum who was held in jail after she used marijuana while pregnant to control her epilepsy seizures. Abortion rights advocates fear that these new bans could open a Pandora’s Box for pregnant women, stripping them of basic rights, not just to abortion, but to medical decision-making and bodily autonomy. Fault Lines examines early abortion bans passed in the US, how women are resisting, and whether the laws will stand. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/