Republicans in the Alabama Senate late Tuesday night passed a bill making nearly all abortions illegal, with the specific goal of having the law challenged in the courts and ultimately, they hope, overturning Roe v. Wade.

The “Human Life Protection Act” bans all abortions from the point of conception, with the only exclusion being in the case of “a serious health risk” for the mother. Abortions for rape and incest are also banned.

Doctors who perform an abortion in Alabama under the bill could be sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Republicans in the House passed the bill last week.

It now heads to Republican Governor Kay Ivey’s desk. She has yet to indicate if she will sign it.

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.

Image by Victoria Pickering via Flickr and a CC license

Ainsley Earhardt Suggests Disappearance of God in American Discourse Has Led to Shootings at Churches and Synagogues

“Fox & Friends” was very focused on God – specifically, the Christian God of the Bible – on Tuesday morning. In one segment the Fox News AM crew used the Bible to interpret the “top topics” of the day, while another focused on what the hosts and a guest claimed is the disappearance of God in America.

Using a week-old story about a Pennsylvania elementary school that has stopped saying, “God bless America” after the Pledge of Allegiance is read over the school’s PA system, “Fox & Friends” invited an attorney from an anti-LGBT Christian law firm on to offer his opinion.

“I’m wondering if they’re so upset about the phrase ‘God Bless America,’ is the school district there in Pennsylvania, that is frankly not too far away from where those flights went down on 9/11, are they going to get rid of the dollar bills that have in God we trust on them?” Jeremy Dys, the Deputy General Counsel for the anti-LGBT organization First Liberty, asked.

“Are they going to start punishing teachers for saying ‘God bless you’ to students that sneeze in the hallway? This is absurd and it should be treated as absurd. When people say ‘the grass is pink,’ it’s not based on any kind of reality, just like they say ‘God bless America is unconstitutional,’ there is no reality that supports that.”

“Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt was quick to weigh in.

“As a Christian my faith is extremely important to me. When I think about taking God out of America, it really saddens me because I feel like we need Him,” she said.

Earhardt appeared to suggest that less people saying “God bless America,” or invoking God’s name has somehow lead to more shootings in churches and synagogues.

“When you have shootings in synagogues, shootings in churches, and you have to get wanded before you walk in to a church now. Where have we come as a country? What’s going to happen if we continue to push this narrative to take God out of everything?”

Dys added, “I fear. I fear for our country, if we were to get rid of these things entirely.”

He called it “a danger to our society” if America gets rid of “any kind of utterance of religion in public.”

Watch:

Ainsley Earhardt: “When I think about taking God out of America, it really saddens me because I feel like we need Him.” It’s always interesting whose feelings matter in these debates and whose don’t. pic.twitter.com/blvt3LRalQ

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) May 7, 2019

On NBC’s Late Night, with Seth Meyers, actress Ann Dowd – who plays Aunt Lydia in the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – applied the lessons of the Republic of Gilead to the Trump administration.

Dowd, whose character Aunt Lydia rules over the women of Gilead with an iron fist, pointed out that her character would not have much patience for President Donald Trump. “Narcissism is her least favorite sin,” she said. “And she has some compassion for mental illness. But not a lot,” Dowd joked. “She would have taken care of business immediately.”

She also pointed out that Aunt Lydia would quickly dispatch Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary infamous for doubling down on White House misinformation.

“Lydia would make mincemeat out of you missy,” Dowd says.