Alabama Rally Against Injustice march for reproductive rights in Birmingham

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe V. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said state laws prohibiting abortion are now in full effect.

“The issue of abortion now returns to the States—and the State of Alabama has unequivocally elected to be a protector of unborn life,” Marshall wrote.

Within hours after the Supreme Court ruling Marshall’s office filed an emergency motion to dissolve the injunction a federal judge had issued to block Alabama’s 2019 abortion ban from going into effect.

The judge immediately lifted the injunction allowing the ban to go into effect.

Any abortion clinic operating in the state of Alabama in violation of Alabama law should immediately cease and desist operations, Marshall said.

Alabama’s law makes it a Class A felony to perform an abortion, unless a process is followed establishing the medical need for an abortion based on the health of the mother.

It now falls to county prosecutors in the handful of Alabama counties where such clinics operated to handle such cases, should they arise.

If the county prosecutors do not step in, the Attorney General could, his office said.

“Under Alabama law, the Attorney General has the authority to assume prosecution of any criminal case within the state of Alabama. Should a district attorney refuse to enforce Alabama law, the Attorney General may step in to prosecute the case.”

Danny Carr, district attorney for the Birmingham division of Jefferson County, said he believes the decision should be a woman’s alone. That decision, he said, should not be a criminal matter.

Carr said he really won’t know how it will be handled unless and until he’s faced with that decision.

“But the law is the law, and we took an oath to uphold the law,’’ Carr said. “I hope medical providers follow the law and don’t put us in that position. It puts us in a quandary.”

Lynneice Washington, district attorney in the Bessemer Cutoff, will not be faced with such a decision as there are no abortion clinics within her jurisdiction.

Still, Washington said she was “dismayed by the reversal of Roe v. Wade as a longstanding precedent protecting the rights of women.”

“Now, elected women prosecutors across the United States are challenged with the decision whether to prosecute violators of abortion laws or exercise lawful prosecutorial discretion in refusal to prosecute,” Washington said.

“As a woman, I stand in solidarity with majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose her own personal healthcare decisions that affect herself and her family.”

In Tuscaloosa County, D.A. Hays Webb said, “We will go where the facts and the law take us.”

“To me, we always want to respect our system of laws and encourage our communities to trust with confidence in our system,’’ Webb said, “and the only way I believe we can do that is through consistent application of the law.”

Efforts by AL.com to reach district attorneys in Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery were not immediately successful.

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