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Alabama Rep Argues For Abortion Access: ‘Kill Them Now’ Or ‘Kill Them Later’

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Grace Carr Reporter
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Democratic Alabama state Rep. John Rogers is facing criticism after he advocated for abortion access and said that unwanted babies should be killed now or they’ll end up in the electric chair.

“Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later,” Rogers said Tuesday in a debate on a state abortion bill, arguing the decision to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion should be left to women.

“You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later,” Rogers said.

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“It ought to be a woman’s choice,” Rogers said. “I’m not about to be the male telling a woman what to do with her body,” he said, adding that “she has a right to make a decision herself.”

“This is stomach curling and makes [Democratic Virginia Gov.] Ralph Northam look like a moderate on abortion,” the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted Wednesday after Rogers’ comments surfaced on Twitter. “Every Democrat running for President needs to be asked where they stand on this. The extreme turn we’ve seen from Dems on abortion recently is truly sickening.”

Rogers also defended access to abortion, saying the procedure is necessary for cases where the child will be “retarded” or “half-deformed.” (RELATED: Kentucky Bans All ‘Eugenics-Based’ Abortions)

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Rogers made his remarks during a debate on House Bill 314, also called the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, which passed the Alabama House Tuesday in a 74 to 3 vote. The bill criminalizes abortion as a Class A felony except in cases where an abortion is “necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother,” according to the legislation. Doctors who perform non-medically necessary abortions face a Class C felony.

“The heart of this bill is to confront a decision that was made by the courts in 1973 that said the baby in a womb is not a person,” said bill sponsor Republican state Rep. Terri Collins.

A slew of Democrats refused to participate in the vote and walked out of the assembly, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.

“The people of Alabama are paying the bill for unconstitutional legislation and we hope that the Senate members will realize its detrimental impact and stop this bill from becoming law,” said an American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama spokesperson, Newsweek reported. “Otherwise it will be challenged in federal court.”

The bill comes after an Alabama probate court in early March recognized an aborted child as a person with rights after the father of an aborted baby sued the clinic that performed the abortion procedure.

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