What do you do when you’re a member of the Alabama Legislative House Black Caucus and a new law just passed that will effectively force the move, or closure, of the state’s last two women’s health clinics? You sing “We Shall Overcome” on the House floor in protest.
The law (HB 301) requires clinics that perform medical services, including abortions, to be located at least 2,000 feet away from K-8 schools. This is the same distance required of sex offenders. The House Black Caucus’ anger came in part from how the voting was handled.
On the last day of the legislative session, after several filibusters, other bills were skipped over by anti-abortion proponents so HB 301 could be rushed through the House late in the evening.
The bill particularly goes after the last clinic in Huntsville, which had already moved away from an elementary school in 2013 to comply with legislative restrictions. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville, said he was concerned about clinics often “causing commotion.”
He didn’t specify what kind of commotion he was talking about. The Alabama ACLU said it would fight the law if it is signed by Alabama Governor Robert Bentley.
House Black Caucus member, Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, said they had “tried to work with the Republican majority” on bills they thought were important. When their efforts failed to stop the bill, they broke out into song.
In response, the speaker of the Alabama House, Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, said they were being disruptive and called twice for security.
Hubbard says he sympathized with representatives in the House who opposed the bill, but the majority had obeyed the rules. He also said:
“…we didn’t do anything that was sneaky or underhanded. The fact they don’t like the bill doesn’t mean we’re being evil to them. They don’t like the bill. We passed the bill and that’s how it works.”
Featured image via flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
