Pro-abortion lawsuit plaintiff likens ‘abortion helpers’ to civil rights activists

A lawsuit filed by the Yellowhammer Fund, an abortion funding group in Alabama, has compared individuals who help others to kill their preborn children (“abortion helpers”) to civil rights activists of decades past — referring to those who assist women in obtaining an abortion as “unsung heroes.”

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, claimed that those seeking abortions in Alabama were “persecuted,” and suggested that so-called “abortion helpers” were merely seeking to protect the “dignity” of abortion clients while “working toward achieving collective liberation.” The lawsuit then compared “abortion helpers” to “[t]hose who participated in the Freedom Rides in Alabama” and the “publishers of The Green Book.”

The Yellowhammer Fund, which describes itself as “an organization that provides funding and practical support to pregnant Alabamians who are forced to leave their home state and often travel hundreds of miles to access legal abortion care,” claimed its lawsuit was a “civil rights action about helpers and the active infringement of their constitutional rights in the State of Alabama.”

Backstory

In 2019, Alabama passed the Human Life Protection Act, “a law banning nearly all abortions. The law took effect last year after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed its previous ruling in Roe v. Wade,” Reuters reported. “Before that ruling, the healthcare providers suing the state had provided abortions, and the Yellowhammer Fund had helped people raise money to obtain the procedure, according the lawsuits,” Reuters also noted in reference to the Yellowhammer lawsuit as well as a second lawsuit filed by the West Alabama Women’s Center, the Alabama Women’s Center, and its medical director Yashica Robinson.

But Yellowhammer Fund claimed that “Alabama prohibited abortions only in Alabama, effective June 24, 2022,” adding that “The U.S. Constitution protected a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion in every state—including Alabama—for nearly 50 years. Despite this right—and nearly a half century of precedent—Alabama enacted legislation creating a near-total abortion ban in 2019.”

According to the complaint, “The Abortion Ban imposes a prison sentence of no less than ten years, and as long as life imprisonment. It also allows courts to impose a fine of up to $60,000.” While abortionists/those assisting with abortions would be subject to such penalties, women obtaining abortions are exempt under the law.

Alabama Attorney General “Threat”

The lawsuit is asking a federal court to prevent the Alabama Attorney General from “making good on his threats to criminalize people that help pregnant Alabamians leave the state to access legal abortion.”

The group pointed to “threats” they claim were made by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall in an August 2022 radio interview, writing in its lawsuit that “The Attorney General of Alabama, Steve Marshall (the “Defendant”), disagrees with the message of solidarity, protest, and defiance being communicated by abortion funds and has set his aim on these helpers. By threatening to prosecute abortion funds and practical support organizations for lawful conduct, Defendant has chilled the First Amendment rights of helpers, including Plaintiff Yellowhammer Fund, and sought to apply Alabama’s laws extraterritorially to prevent aid to pregnant Alabamians seeking to exercise their federal constitutional rights to travel out of Alabama and access lawful abortion care in other states. Defendant has also interfered with Yellowhammer Fund’s federal constitutional rights.”

“The Alabama Abortion Ban reaches only as far as Alabama’s borders,” the lawsuit claimed. “The plain text of the Abortion Ban does not purport to apply beyond Alabama, and in fact limits its application to Alabama.”

“Even though Alabama has no power to criminalize lawful activity that takes place in other states, the consequences of the Attorney General’s threats are significant and have forced Yellowhammer Fund to stop operating its abortion fund due to fear of prosecution,” the group wrote in its press release.

“Abortion Helpers” compared to Civil Rights Activists

“‘Helpers,'” Yellowhammer Fund’s lawsuit claimed, “are the people who aid others in accessing their rights. The desire and willingness to aid those in need or facing persecution, even at cost to oneself, are not just American values; they are foundational to a civilized society and part of what makes us human.”

“When helpers extend a hand, they do more than simply provide aid; they send a message. To those who are persecuted, they send a message of solidarity that the persecuted person’s humanity is bound up in that of the helpers’, that their dignity is connected, that their rights are one and the same, and that the helper is working toward achieving collective liberation,” the suit added. “To the oppressors, helpers send a message of protest and defiance: that the persecutor’s attempts to isolate and oppress certain communities will not stand. This is true whether the aid furthers a politically popular viewpoint or one that is held by the minority. And it is especially true when a state disagrees with the message, values, or goals of the aid provided.”

“Helpers are often the unsung heroes of protecting civil liberties. Those who participated in the Freedom Rides in Alabama were helpers. The publishers of The Green Book were helpers. Today, abortion funds and practical support organizations are helpers for one of the great civil rights struggles of our time—the struggle for reproductive justice.”

Historically, there were some civil rights activists of the past — such as Fannie Lou Hamer, who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party — who opposed abortion. She was not fond of so-called “abortion helpers” but instead described the taking of innocent life as a form of Black genocide. Journalist William Hines noted in 1969 that Hamer “denounced voluntary abortion as legalized murder and made it clear that she regards it as part of a comprehensive white man’s plot to exterminate black population of the United States.” Another writer noted in 1980 that as “a delegate to the White House Conference on Food and Nutrition… [Hamer] spoke out strongly against abortion as a means of genocide of Blacks.”

In 1973, a member of the Black Panthers was quoted in Jet magazine as saying: “The abortion law hides behind the guise of helping women when in reality it will attempt to destroy our people…. Black people are aware that laws made supposedly to ensure our well-being are often put into practice in such a way that they ensure our deaths.”

But it should be noted that the 1961 Freedom Riders did not promote the violent death of another group of humans.

Instead, according to the Alabama Historical Commission, they identified with Black Americans and “would travel on regularly scheduled buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, sitting together on buses and in waiting rooms and eating together in bus station restaurants. The goal was to compel the U.S. government to enforce Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregated transportation seating and facilities,” the Commission claimed.

Likewise, the Negro Motorist Green Book, published from 1936-1966, was not a resource for where to obtain the funding to kill defenseless human beings; rather, according to AL.com, it was “a resource for travelers which identified safe places for African Americans to eat, purchase gas, spend the night, and access other services in foreign towns.”

“Yellowhammer stopped funding abortions shortly after Dobbs was decided, and hasn’t resumed doing so due to its fear of prosecution, it says,” BloombergLaw.com reported. “The clinic said it would resume coordinating the transfer of patients’ care to out-of-state providers, helping patients with scheduling appointments, and forwarding medical records but for Marshall’s threats.”