On Tuesday night, after four hours of heated debate, a group of 25 male Republican state senators voted to outlaw nearly all abortions in the state (with no exceptions for rape or incest). The legislation — the most extreme abortion ban in the country — is now in the hands of Alabama governor Kay Ivey, who has yet to indicate whether she will sign it into law (though the AP notes that the bill’s sponsor, Representative Terri Collins, has said she believes Ivey will support the ban), and is considered a direct, intentional threat to Roe v. Wade.
The debate demonstrated the degree to which reproductive rights are under attack in this country — and there was perhaps no better example than the man who sponsored the bill in the senate, Republican Clyde Chambliss, who made many confusing and ignorant comments in the course of the debate. Here are some of the most horrifying things he said.
Per the Daily Beast, Chambliss’s ignorance was on full display in his opening statement, when he admitted to not being “trained medically” and thereby uncertain of how women can tell if they are pregnant — which one might think is important information to have when pushing a six-week ban.
Chambliss continually said that a woman could end her pregnancy if she did not know she was pregnant, which many have taken to be a reference to the morning-after pill, according to reporter Abbey Crain.
He said, per KGUN-9, “What I hope is, if we pass this bill, that all young ladies would be educated by their parents, their guardians that should a situation like this occur, you need to go get help — you need to do it immediately.” By “help,” he meant mental and physical treatment — but not abortion if a pregnancy occurs as a result of the attack.
On the topic of whether a woman’s eggs would be subjected to the abortion law, Chambliss said:
Democratic senator Linda Coleman-Madison slammed Chambliss’s repeated comments about pregnancy, saying (per the Daily Beast), “You men don’t know what you don’t know because you’ve never been pregnant. You can’t get pregnant, you’ve never been pregnant, you don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant, you don’t know what a woman goes through when she’s pregnant.” He then replied: