As has become the trend with right-wing legislation in Juneau, the public turned out in force on Monday to oppose Republicans’ latest attempt to criminalize abortion in Alaska.
Testifiers from around the state called in to oppose House Bill 107, legislation by Big Lake Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe that would redefine “life” and “person” in the state’s criminal statutes. While he argues it’s simply an attempt to define life in state law, a state official acknowledged that it would allow murder charges to be filed against abortion providers and people who receive abortions.
Many testifiers said they would leave the state or rethink their plans to have a family, warning that such vague language would lead to cases where doctors refuse to provide critical life-saving care rather than face potential murder charges.
“I’m actually currently pregnant, and hearing about this bill, I’ve decided I won’t do it again if this passes in Alaska because it’s terrifying,” said Lily Overland, noting that several of the documents used to justify the bill are more than 100 years old. “I don’t see why Alaska, our Legislature and our people would want to go back in time and strip women of their bodily autonomy, and honestly, their privacy. The rights of an egg or a fetus are not worth more than a woman’s life.”
Much of the testimony was in a similar tone. Several people testified about the critical importance of accessing abortion, arguing that they would rather die than be forced to carry the baby of a rapist. Several objected to McCabe’s references to “the passive role of the mother’s body” in pregnancy, saying that he was denigrating women.
“Human life doesn’t begin at the moment of conception,” Denise Miller said. “A fertilized egg needs a womb to develop into a baby. This bill would put a non-viable organism on the same footing as a human being. The result would be to decrease the rights of families and women throughout Alaska. It will adversely impact health care and access to contraceptives. If this bill passes, a woman’s health and life will have no more value than the non-viable organisms.”
The legislation comes as the conservative attack on abortion marked another chapter with the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children, throwing into question the continued legality and viability of in vitro fertilization, a process where frozen embryos may be destroyed or damaged due to the nature of the procedure or because pre-implantation genetic testing reveals a problem.
At a hearing last week, McCabe refused to answer how his legislation could impact in vitro fertilization.
Under current Alaska law, people can already be charged with the death of an unborn child if it can be proven they were trying to kill the unborn child or the mother. There are exemptions that protect abortions, as the right to health care is covered by the Alaska Constitution’s strong privacy clause.
Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore told the House Judiciary Committee last week that those exemptions wouldn’t apply to any potential murder cases that could be brought if this bill becomes law, as the bill would extend personhood to embryos. He also conceded that legal precedent surrounding the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause may halt any criminal case before it goes to trial.
Amending that privacy clause was a central element of the campaign to call a constitutional convention during the 2022 election, an effort that Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy supported as the first and only sitting governor to support such a move. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure, with more than 70% of voters opposed to opening the constitution to changes.
That’s a point several testifiers brought up during the hearing, with one testifier imploring legislators to “quit wasting our time.”
The legislation remains in the House Judiciary Committee. Committee Chair Rep. Sarah Vance, a far-right Republican from Homer who earlier this session apologized after complaining that white women weren’t included in a hearing on missing and murdered Indigenous women, told testifiers that the bill would be up soon and that “I look forward into delving into the science that defines life.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
