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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Vivian Ho in San Francisco (now) and Joanna Walters and Jessica Glenza in New York (earlier)

Alabama abortion ban: governor signs bill into law – live

Pro-choice supporters protest as Alabama state senate votes on the strictest anti-abortion bill in the United States.
Pro-choice supporters protest as Alabama state senate votes on the strictest anti-abortion bill in the United States. Photograph: Christopher Aluka Berry/Reuters

Evening summary

Intrepid Guardian reporter Julia Carrie Wong took a look at the White House’s new tool to combat social media tech bias....and found out it’s just a web survey. She made her own survey in response:

The Alabama abortion law will most likely be tied up in courts for quite some time - Planned Parenthood has already indicated that it would file a lawsuit. But just a reminder that President Trump has been quietly filling the federal court system with conservative-minded judges for years now.

Alabama governor signs abortion bill into law

Alabama’s Republican-controlled state senate passed yesterday the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy. Today, despite protests and lawsuits, governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law.

More from the governor:

In all meaningful respects, this bill closely resembles an abortion ban that has been a part of Alabama law for well over 100 years. As today’s bill itself recognizes, that longstanding abortion law has been rendered “unenforceable as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.”

No matter one’s personal view on abortion, we can all recognize that, at least for the short term, this bill may similarly be unenforceable. As citizens of this great country, we must always respect the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court even when we disagree with their decisions. Many Americans, myself included, disagreed when Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973. The sponsors of this bill believe that it is time, once again, for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit this important matter, and they believe this act may bring about the best opportunity for this to occur.

Updated

If you want some more context for the whole national emergency telecoms threat, take a listen to this episode of Today in Focus in which Guardian reporters Rupert Neate, Alex Hern and Tania Branigan discuss Huawei, the company at the center of it all.

Senator Kamala Harris tossed some sass into the Democratic race today when she was asked about running mates.

Typically when this question comes up for the junior senator from California, it’s framed around whether she would be this or that candidate’s vice president. Instead, she turned the question on its head and pulled in former vice president Joe Biden, who has a strong lead in almost every national poll.

“If people want to speculate about running mates, I encourage that, because I think that Joe Biden would be a great running mate,” she said. “As vice president, he’s proven that he knows how to do the job.”

New York mayor Bill de Blasio to enter 2020 race

“Good Morning America” announced that New York mayor Bill de Blasio is scheduled to appear on the show tomorrow morning, sending tongues wagging that he will be announcing that he will be the 24th candidate in this race.

Within minutes, a campaign spokeswoman confirmed the announcement to NBC News.

President Trump has long been outspoken about social media companies banning far-right and other extremist figures. Today, it appears that the White House has launched a tool for people to report if their accounts had been “suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies”.

“SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” the landing page reads.

“No matter your views, if you suspect political bias caused such an action to be taken against you, share your story with President Trump.”

Visit the page here.

Updated

Hey all, Vivian Ho taking over the blog for Joanna Walters and Jessica Glenza. In case you missed it, here’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s statement on President Trump’s national emergency declaration over alleged telecoms threats from foreign companies.

Here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening this Wednesday afternoon:

  • Donald Trump has just declared a national emergency, barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that could pose a national security risk. This paves a path for a ban on business with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant.
  • Commercial flights between the US and Venezuela have been suspended by acting US homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan because conditions in Venezuela threaten the “safety and security of passengers, aircraft and crew”. Many airlines have already stopped flying to the country because of security concerns.
  • Abortion providers in Ohio have formally filed a lawsuit against the so-called “fetal heartbeat” bill that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Lawmakers in Ohio, like their counterparts in Alabama yesterday, enacted the law to tee up a legal challenge to Roe vs Wade.
  • A California man who threatened to kill employees of the Boston Globe after the newspaper made calls last year for media organizations to denounce Trump has pleaded guilty in federal court this afternoon. At the same time, Trump went on a Tweet-vent against the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order declaring a national emergency and barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk, paving the way for a ban on doing business with China’s Huawei Technologies Co, Reuters writes.
The news agency had reported yesterday that Trump was expected to take action on the long-awaited proposal this week.

The executive order invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president the authority to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency that threatens the United States.

The order directs the Commerce Department, working with other government agencies, to draw up a plan for enforcement.

Trump declares national emergency over telecoms threats from foreign companies

Amid a deepening trade war with China, President Trump on Wednesday declared a “national emergency” to protect U.S. communications networks in a move that gives the federal government broad powers to bar American companies from doing business with certain foreign suppliers — including the Chinese firm Huawei, the Washington Post writes.

More to follow....

Updated

Now back to the issue of the day: abortion rights.

This hour we travel metaphorically to Utah, where a chief prosecutor in the county with the state’s only two clinics that provide abortion has said he won’t enforce strict, new legislation there.

A recent law in Utah bans abortions after 18 weeks of pregnancy, and is already the subject of a court challenge and cannot currently be enforced, the Salt Lake Tribune has reported.

This week the Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill, a Democrat, became the latest example of an official resisting ultra-conservative new restrictions around the US.
Gill said the Utah ban appears unconstitutional, so any idea of taking up the legislation’s provision to file felony charges against doctors who perform abortions, as the court challenge plays out, could violate their rights.
“I think that’s the only legal and ethical thing for me to do, which is not use the power of my office to violate the constitutional rights of my citizens when there is well-established precedent that says it is unconstitutional,” he said, the AP reports.


The decision by Gill and echoes a similar one from the attorney general of Michigan.

With anti-abortion advocates optimistic designing extreme legislation as a route to challenging Roe vs Wade, blue-leaning states are moving to secure access to abortions.
Against that backdrop, pushback from prosecutors could become more common, especially in politically mixed areas, said Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University College of Law.
Prosecutors also have a lot of discretion about how laws are enforced because they decide who to charge and what cases to file. Before the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, many bans weren’t enforced unless there were complications, Ziegler said.
“You’ll see more statements of this kind. But how they’ll be enforced is much more complicated than what first may seem to be the case,” she said.
Most laws have exceptions. The measure in Utah has allowances for cases of rape, fatal fetal deformity and serious detriment to a woman’s health.
Like Utah, Arkansas has also passed a ban on abortions after 18 weeks.
Gill secured a federal order on Monday confirming his office won’t have to enforce the measure while the court challenge there plays out.
However, if the law is eventually upheld by the US Supreme Court, Gill said, he likely would have to enforce it.
“My job is to keep my personal beliefs out of it, but I absolutely believe that our citizens have constitutional rights and our institutions have an obligation to serve those citizens and not simply roll over and play dead,” he said.


Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, pledged at a state Planned Parenthood conference not to enforce the state’s pre-existing abortion ban if Roe is ever overturned.

Updated

This afternoon the president, once again, decided to tweet-vent against the New York Times and the Washington Post, calling both organs fake news for reporting that there’s in-fighting among his foreign policy team.

As this was happening, a California man who threatened to kill employees of the Boston Globe after the newspaper last year called on media organizations nationwide to denounce Donald Trump’s attacks on the media pleaded guilty in federal court, prosecutors said.

Robert Chain, 68, of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to seven counts of making threatening communications in interstate commerce, the US attorney’s office in Boston said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.


He faces five years in prison per count at his sentencing, scheduled for September 23.
Neither Chain nor his attorney spoke when they left court. But his attorney, William Weinreb, said last month his client took “full responsibility” for his actions.


“He is anxious to make a full, public apology, expressing his sincere remorse to those he affected,” Weinreb said in an email last month.

Shady! Bill Barr, Nancy Pelosi and handcuffs all in one sentence.

Fox News producer Jake Gibson tweets that the attorney general got actual facetime with the House Speaker earlier and apparently he asked if she’d brought her handcuffs.

Pelosi, earlier this month accused William Barr, of committing a “crime” when he told lawmakers during a congressional hearing in April that he was unaware that special counsel Robert Mueller was unhappy with his portrayal of the findings from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any collusion or obstruction of justice by the president of the Trump campaign.

“The attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,” she said at the time. “And that’s a crime.”

North Carolina’s most infamous political story lines of recent years are merging into a congressional race this summer that pits the architect of the state’s “bathroom bill” against a Democrat who was granted an electoral do-over after evidence of ballot fraud tainted his prior opponent’s campaign.


State Sen. Dan Bishop topped nine other Republican candidates seeking the 9th Congressional District nomination on Tuesday, winning almost half of the ballots cast in an extremely low turnout election that drew less than 10% of the eligible voters. He will face Democrat Dan McCready, as well as Libertarian and Green candidates, on Sept. 10.


Bishop’s role as sponsor of a headline-grabbing “bathroom bill” that voided anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people is likely to be a focal point in this repeat race, ordered by election officials who deemed last year’s contest too tainted to stand. And despite the low turnout on Tuesday, the general election could draw a heavy infusion of political cash on both sides because it’s virtually alone on the political calendar this year.


The vote count last November showed McCready, a former Marine and Harvard MBA, narrowly losing to Republican Mark Harris. But then, an investigation found Harris ignored warnings and paid a political operative who collected mail-in ballots. Harris opted not to run again.


In 2016, Bishop sponsored House Bill 2, the law that voided a Charlotte ordinance expanding LGBT rights and prevented similar anti-discrimination rules anywhere else in the state. HB2 was nicknamed the “bathroom bill” because it also directed transgender people to use public bathrooms and showers that matched their birth sex. The measure made waves nationally and prompted boycotts by entertainers, governments and some businesses thinking about moving jobs to North Carolina.


Bishop said while voters knew HB2 had his whole-hearted backing, the law was partially repealed in 2017 and is no longer as important as other issues.


“People are astonished and amazed and dismayed at what they see coming out of Washington these days from liberal crazy clowns. Socialism. Open borders. Infanticide. 90% tax rates. Having prison inmates vote. It goes on and on,” Bishop told supporters Tuesday night. “And of course, most of all, an incessant drive to impeach the president.”


With conflict between President Donald Trump and Washington Democrats heating up after the investigation into Russian support for the president’s 2016 campaign, the four-month contest between Bishop and McCready is expected to serve as a measure of political tides and an open vault for donors.


McCready ran a solar-energy financing fund before starting his run for Congress two years ago. He’s built up his name recognition over the extended campaign and had almost $1.6 million in cash on hand as of May 2, according to Federal Election Commission reports.


But McCready will be swimming upstream in a congressional district that has been in GOP hands since 1963 and which Trump won by 12 percentage points in 2016. The district stretches from suburban Charlotte to suburban Fayetteville along the South Carolina border.


Bishop accused McCready of refusing to clearly state his positions on public issues during last year’s primary and general elections.


McCready “went through two elections without telling anyone where he stood on anything. That ends tomorrow,” Bishop said Tuesday night.


McCready last year said he would not support Nancy Pelosi for her top leadership role in the U.S. House. She was elected speaker in January after Democrats took over the House majority. McCready refused during an October debate to rule in or out whether he supported impeaching Trump.


But the GOP’s brand also has suffered in the wake of the much-publicized investigation into Harris’s campaign, followed last month by federal charges accusing the state party’s chairman of working with a big-money donor to try bribing North Carolina’s top insurance regulator.

As states such as Georgia and Alabama move to near-total bans on abortion, often making the procedure illegal before women know they are pregnant, men are likely to also be severely impacted.

Like many other states, Georgia has robust child support laws with financial consequences. Here is a run-down of what the impacts could be for men from Quartz:

A ‘non-custodial parent,’ or the parent any child doesn’t live with (the man in about 80% of the cases in the US), is required to turn over a significant portion of his income in Georgia to the custodial parent until the child finishes high school, or is 20 years old, whichever comes first. That amount now depends on a calculation of both parents’ income and health care costs; 20% of gross pay was standard in Georgia in the past.

Flights between US and Venezuela suspended

The secretary of homeland security announced conditions in Venezuela threaten the “safety and security of passengers, aircraft and crew,” and suspended flights to the South American country.

Reuters reported that Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and many airlines had already stopped flying to the country because of security concerns.

American Airlines Group Inc indefinitely suspended flights to Venezuela in March. In April, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited U.S. air operators from flying below 26,000 feet in Venezuela’s airspace.

Last week, the Trump administration expanded sanctions to pressure President Nicolas Maduro to cede power to Juan Guaido.

The White House has criticized House Democrats’ investigation into obstruction of justice by the president as serving “political theater.” In turn, the lawmaker in charge of those investigations called the White House position “preposterous” in an interview.

The letter was sent by White House council Pat Cipollone, in response to a March request by Congressional investigators for documents. In a 12-page letter, Cipollone asked the committee to narrow its “sweeping” request and provide a legislative reason why the documents should be released, according to Reuters.

The White House will not participate in the committee’s ‘investigation’ that brushes aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice after a two-year-long effort in favor of political theater pre-ordained to reach a preconceived and false result,” Cipollone’s 12-page letter said.

Here is more reporting from Reuters:

The documents requested relate to everything from the contents of Trump’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin to his communications with former White House counsel Donald McGahn, the firing of former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn and former FBI director James Comey, and possible pardons for Trump associates who pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the probe.

The committee also seeks documents aimed at probing whether Trump has used the White House to enrich himself in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

In his 448-page redacted report released last month, Mueller described numerous links between Trump*s 2016 presidential campaign and various Russians but concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish that the campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Nadler, Democrat of New York, holds a hearing on “Executive Privilege and Congressional Oversight,” in Washington.
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Nadler, Democrat of New York, holds a hearing on “Executive Privilege and Congressional Oversight,” in Washington. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Jameela Jamil, formerly a presenter on BBC Radio 1 and now one of the stars of the sitcom The Good Place, opened up about an abortion she had when she was young.

Jamila called it the “best decision I have ever made.”

The Trump administration announced today it would delay tariffs on cars from Europe, a decision which was to be decided by May 18.

Now, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he would travel to Beijing to continue trade talks with China.

“My expectation is that we will go to Beijing at some point in the near future to continue those discussions,” said Mnuchin in a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, according to Reuters. “We’re continuing discussions. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

More on the decision here, from the Guardian business liveblog.

Yesterday, a top British general contradicted US intelligence reports about increased, but vague, threats from Iran.

A story in the New York Times argues talk of increased threats from Iran are meant to draw Iran into an “armed conflict” with the US.

Abortion providers sue over Ohio law banning most abortions

While Alabama’s Republican Governor considers whether to sign the state’s near-total abortion ban, abortion providers in Ohio have formally filed a lawsuit against an abortion ban there.

Lawmakers in Ohio enacted a law which bans abortion after six weeks, called a “fetal heartbeat” bill. At six weeks, a pregnancy is called an embryo, and the still microscopic tissues which will become the heart have not fully formed.

When lawmakers enacted the law, they acknowledged it was unlikely to ever go into effect, but was instead meant to challenge Roe versus Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the US.

“If a woman is forced to continue a pregnancy against her will, it can pose a risk to her physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as to the stability and well-being of her family, including existing children,” the lawsuit said, according to the AP.

Protesters, dressed as handmaids, wait outside of the Alabama statehouse after a ban on nearly all abortions passed the senate in Montgomery, Alabama. The measure now goes to Gov. Kay Ivey, who has not said whether she supports the measure.
Protesters, dressed as handmaids, wait outside of the Alabama statehouse after a ban on nearly all abortions passed the senate in Montgomery, Alabama. The measure now goes to Gov. Kay Ivey, who has not said whether she supports the measure. Photograph: Mickey Welsh/AP

With both chambers of the Alabama legislature passing a near-total abortion ban, attention is going to turn to Republican Governor Kay Ivey, who must sign the bill for it to become law.

The law has no exemptions for rape or incest, and criminalizes doctors who perform the procedure. Anti-abortion campaigners hope the law will be challenged in court, and eventually prompt the US Supreme Court to reconsider Roe versus Wade.

Abortion remains legal in all 50 states as long as Roe versus Wade stands.

Here is more reporting from the AP:

Abortion rights advocates Wednesday morning urged Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to reject the bill and vowed swift legal action if it is enacted.

“We are laser-focused on urging Gov. Kay Ivey to veto this dangerous bill. If she chooses not to, then we will take this to court and ensure that abortion remains safe and legal and accessible in the state of Alabama,” said Staci Fox, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast.

Ivey has not commented on the bill but the Republican fixture in Alabama has long identified as anti-abortion and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Terri Collins, said she expects her to sign the legislation.

...“Roe v. Wade has ended the lives of millions of children,” Alabama Republican Sen. Clyde Chambliss said in a statement. “While we cannot undo the damage that decades of legal precedence under Roe have caused, this bill has the opportunity to save the lives of millions of unborn children.”

Democrats criticized the bill as a mixture of political grandstanding and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“The state of Alabama ought to be ashamed of herself. You ought to be ashamed. Go look in the mirror,” Sen. Bobby Singleton said “Women in this state didn’t deserve this. This is all about political grandstanding.”

Trump returned to one of his favorite topics during this speech: the southern border. With an assist from Guardian US reporter Amanda Holpuch, we are fact-checking his statements.

Trump: The “wrong people [are] being allowed to come in” over the Southern border, and that sanctuary cities are “deadly”.

More context... While 310,531 people were apprehended trying to cross the southern border illegally in 2017, in the same year more than 600,000 people who entered the US legally by air or sea overstayed their visas and remained in the country at the end of the year, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This is a tiny fraction of the 52 million people who entered the US legally in 2017. It is estimated that the number of visa overstays are actually higher, because the DHS report does not include land crossings.

Trump: “I don’t think most countries are giving us their finest,” he added.

Actually... The share of families are coming over the border has increased steadily since 2012, many of whom are refugees from violent countries.

Here is one advocate Jorge Santos from Udefegua, which monitors attacks against journalists: “There’s a growing feeling that there is little possibility of a dignified life in Guatemala which is producing the increased flow of migrants and refugees.”

President Trump just brought the family of California police officer Corporal Ronil Singh up to the microphone to speak, through Secret Service barricades.

“Every family sitting out here wants justice,” said his widow, holding his 10-month-old son, “And that’s what I want for my husband.”

Trump has said the perpetrators of ambushes on police should, “get the death penalty”, to cheers.

“The ongoing attacks on our police must end,” Trump said. The trials of perpetrators should “go fast,” and added “fair but fast.”

Trump is now speaking about police officers killed in the line of duty. Two of those officers are Brookhaven, Mississippi police officers who were shot in January, Corporal Zach Moak and Patrolman James White.

“This morning we are honored to be joined by the families of both of these remarkable officers,” he said.

U.S. President Trump speaks at annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service on Capitol Hill in Washington.
President Trump speaks at annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

The White House will not sign onto the “Christchurch call to action”, an international agreement to combat online extremism and hate speech. This is the statement from the White House, from the Washington Post:

We continue to be proactive in our efforts to counter terrorist content online while also continuing to respect freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” the White House said. “Further, we maintain that the best tool to defeat terrorist speech is productive speech, and thus we emphasize the importance of promoting credible, alternative narratives as the primary means by which we can defeat terrorist messaging.”

Trump has often been criticized for retweeting conspiracy theories and alt-right personalities who boost white supremacy.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden just tweeted about the near-total abortion ban passed by Alabama’s Senate Tuesday night.

His comment is notable for two reasons.

1. Many Democratic candidates tweeted about this last night. It took him many hours longer to denounce the near-total ban.

(This reporter is working on a full list of 2020 contender reactions right now.)

2. Biden has an inconsistent record on abortion. He is a Catholic, and at times, has voted in favor of restrictions, other times against them.

Trump and members of his cabinet are now listening to the National Anthem. Trump is flanked by Attorney General Bill Barr and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, among others.

President Trump has just entered the National Peace Officer’s Memorial Service. Again, here is the livestream.

Kirsten Gillibrand rallies for reproductive rights in Georgia

Democratic US presidential candidate and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand heads to Georgia tomorrow to rally against near-total abortion bans. Roughly one week ago, Georgia joined five other states in enacting a ban on abortion after six-weeks.

The laws effectively ban all abortion, since most women do not yet know they are pregnant at six weeks. Georgia’s law makes exceptions for rape and incest, but other similar laws do not – for example in Ohio.

From our story on the legislators who passed Alabama’s abortion ban:

Alabama’s new law mandating an almost blanket ban on abortion, the strictest in the United States, was passed by this group of exclusively white, male politicians.

The Alabama law will disproportionately affect black and poor women, because they are more likely to seek abortions, and less likely to have resources to obtain an abortion out-of-state.

Of the 27 Republicans, all white men, that dominate the 35-seat Alabama senate, 25 voted to pass the bill late on Tuesday.

This is what the Republican leadership group in the senate looks like, as presented on their caucus’s website:

President Trump is expected to speak any moment at the 39th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service – we will be watching live.

Here is a link to the livestream if you want to watch it with us.

Wisconsin’s legislature could be the next state to pass abortion restrictions as soon as today. The state legislature is now poised to pass the so-called “born alive” bill touted by President Trump, although the governor of that state promised to veto the bill.

More reporting from the AP here:

The moves in Wisconsin come as anti-abortion politicians and activists feel emboldened by the addition of conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. They hope to ignite legal fights and eventually overturn the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday night approved a bill that would ban nearly all abortions. And Missouri’s Republican-led Senate was taking up a bill Wednesday that would ban abortions after the eighth week of pregnancy, which is similar to so-called fetal heartbeat laws enacted by Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia.

Wisconsin already bans abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, except in cases in which the mother’s life is in danger. This is well before the generally accepted age of viability, which the Supreme Court said in Roe v. Wade is between 24 weeks and 28 weeks. Wisconsin also has a law passed in 1849 that bans abortions and would take effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

The bill before the Wisconsin Assembly on Wednesday addresses the extremely rare occurrence in which a baby is born alive during a failed abortion attempt. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded just 143 instances nationwide in which live births resulted from at least 9.3 million abortion attempts between 2003 and 2014. There is no comparable data in Wisconsin because state officials don’t track it.

...

The Assembly was also voting on three other abortion-related bills. The others would cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, prohibit abortions based on the fetus’ race, sex or defects and require providers to tell women seeking abortions using the drug mifepristone that the process may be reversed after the first dose.

Amnesty International UK has just released a statement about Alabama’s abortion ban bill calling it “horrifying,” and “no better” than the current law in Northern Ireland.

Here is Amnesty International UK’s Northern Ireland campaign manager Grainne Teggart:

It’s devastating news that Alabama has become the latest in a string of US states to enact a horrifying abortion ban. The roll-back on reproductive rights in the US is happening at a terrifyingly rapid rate.

We should be outraged by this, but let’s also remember that in the UK we’re no better – women in Northern Ireland are subjected to one of the most severe abortion bans in the world which also carries criminal penalties of up to life imprisonment. It’s shameful that that our government is allowing such a violation of reproductive rights to continue to blight the lives of so many.

The UK government’s silence on the situation in Northern Ireland is putting the UK in the same camp as those US states pushing women’s reproductive health back into the dark ages. We should be leading on this issue, not lagging behind. We call on the Government to stop ignoring the cruel reality of our law and urgently legislate for change so that the harm caused is brought to an end.”

Pro-choice supporters in London stage a demonstration in Parliament Square to campaign for women’s reproductive rights, legalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland and it’s decriminalisation in the UK.
Pro-choice supporters in London stage a demonstration in Parliament Square to campaign for women’s reproductive rights, legalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland and it’s decriminalisation in the UK. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/REX/Shutterstock

Former US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton just tweeted her opposition to the Alabama bill.

It is common to see abortion restrictions in the US – for the last two decades abortion opponents have been very effective at gradually restricting where, when and how a woman can obtain one.

But at least one state has sought to protect abortion – New York.

Here is more from the Guardian’s view on abortion: protecting a human right.

At this grim time there are signs of hope. New York state has sought to bolster abortion rights this year. Chile somewhat eased its ban in 2017. And last year’s landslide vote in favour of repealing Ireland’s near-total ban resonated worldwide.

Nine more US states are considering anti-abortion legislation similar to that just passed in Alabama.

Bills have so far passed one chamber in Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to Guardian reporter Jason Wilson.

Others have been introduced to statehouses in Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Texas and West Virginia without yet facing votes.

Democratic US presidential candidates have condemned Alabama’s abortion ban. Here is what they said about the bill:

As well, here are statements from US Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker, Jay Inslee and Julián Castro.

A federal court in Mississippi is scheduled to hear the first arguments against a six-week abortion ban in that state, brought by the state’s last remaining abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The judge hearing the case struck down a 15-week abortion ban in November 2018, saying it “unequivocally” violated a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy.

Abortion remains legal in all 50 US states while civil rights groups challenge abortion bans.

Abortion opponents argue with the Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s administrator Shannon Brewer, right, over opponents trespassing onto the property of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.
Abortion opponents argue with the Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s administrator Shannon Brewer, right, over opponents trespassing onto the property of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic. Photograph: Rogelio V. Solis/AP

Why has Alabama passed such a strict abortion ban?

Anti-abortion campaigners hope the bill will challenge the 1973 US Supreme Court case which legalized abortion, Roe versus Wade.

Guardian US reporter Erin Durkin brought us these comments from one of the architects of the ban in Montgomery, Alabama, state Representative Rich Wingo:

It goes after Roe directly... We’re going in the front door and we’re saying to the supreme court, please explain to us how this isn’t a person. With modern technology, with everything that we know, this child needs to be protected under the US constitution.”

Although anti-abortion campaigners often reference changes in medical technology for their abortion restrictions, the real change has been in the US Supreme Court, where the Trump administration successfully confirmed two conservative justices.

The bill still needs to be signed by Alabama’s Republican governor. Because Roe versus Wade remains in effect, abortion is still legal in all 50 states even as states enact bans.

Alabama passes nation's strictest abortion ban

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s politics liveblog.

Last night, Alabama passed the nation’s strictest abortion ban, outlawing the procedure for women and making it a criminal offense for physicians, except in cases where the woman faces fatal complications.

The bill still must be signed by the state’s Republican governor before it becomes law. Civil rights groups have already promised a lawsuit.

The bill is part of a wave of new legislation from Republican-led states. Anti-abortion campaigners hope they will reach the US supreme court and challenge Roe versus Wade, the 1973 decision which legalized abortion.

Here’s what else is happening today:

  • President Trump is expected to speak at the Annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service at 11am ET.
  • Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, agreed to testify in a closed-door interview with the Senate Intelligence committee.
  • One of the first female Native American lawmakers in Congress is defying Trump’s push to drill for oil on public lands.
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Tom’s Guide
Guy shoots rap concert using a GameBoy camera. Don't believe me? Read this…
A man has used a GameBoy camera to photograph a rap concert, using a 3D-printed rig to attach his phone to the console to video himself
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