On September 30, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined the attorneys general of Louisiana and Arkansas in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the “shield laws” of California, New York, and Massachusetts.

Those laws protect the doctors and companies who mail abortion pills into states like ours. When a pro-life state tries to hold them accountable, the shield states refuse to cooperate.

The three states also filed a separate federal lawsuit in Louisiana against 30 people and organizations accused of shipping abortion drugs across state lines.

The pills coming through our mailboxes are killing preborn children every day.

But there is a hard question every Alabamian needs to ask.

What happens if Alabama wins?

The Pipeline Is Only Half the Problem

Back in June, Marshall sent cease-and-desist letters to six companies selling abortion pills to Alabamians. His office relied on the state’s consumer protection law, which carries civil fines of up to $2,000 per violation.

“Alabama’s law is clear, abortion is illegal in this state,” Marshall said.

Except it isn’t. Not for every abortion.

Alabama’s homicide law already says a preborn child at any stage of development is a person. Yet the same code carves abortion out of the law that protects every other person. A self-managed abortion is still legal in Alabama at any stage of pregnancy.

So the state can fine a website. It can sue a doctor in New York. But the abortion itself, the act that ends a child’s life, is still not treated as the killing of a person.

A child killed by a pill ordered online is just as dead as a child killed in a clinic.

Sign the petition to give preborn children equal protection in Alabama.

Chasing Suppliers Will Never Be Enough

Texas has tried the same strategy. Its new law, HB 7, lets private citizens sue anyone who mails abortion pills into the state. This year, a California doctor became the first person sued under it.

These efforts all share the same weakness. They go after the supply and leave the act itself legal.

For every company that receives a letter, another one opens. For every doctor who is sued, a shield state stands ready to protect the next one. The demand is untouched, because the law still tells Alabama that abortion is not murder.

Equal protection fixes that at the root. It repeals the provision that says abortion is not murder, so preborn children are protected by the same homicide laws that protect everyone else. No new categories. No exceptions.

What You Can Do

Lawsuits against out-of-state suppliers will never deliver justice for preborn children in Alabama. Only equal protection will.

Ask your legislators the question that matters most:

Will you cosponsor the Equal Protection Act?

Add your name to the petition to End Abortion in Alabama.

Sources: Alabama Attorney General’s Office, Yellowhammer News (September 30), Yellowhammer News (June), The Texas Tribune