Alabama governor signs bill to regulate abortion clinics like sex offenders [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, signed a bill into law on Thursday that will regulate abortion clinics like sex offenders.
The bill, SB 205, could shut down two clinics in which the vast majority of the state’s abortions occur. One of the clinics, Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville, was temporarily closed in June 2014 as a result of Trap (targeted restriction on abortion provider) laws in the state when it was determined that the facility could not be retrofitted to comply with the laws’ building code regulations. Its new building, however, sits across the street from Huntsville’s Academy for Academics and Arts, a K-8 school, making it vulnerable once again to shutdown under the newly signed law.
SB 205 mandates that abortion clinics be more than 2,000ft (600 meters) from any public school serving children elementary through middle school age, the same kind of restriction required of registered sex offenders.
James Owens of Naral Pro-Choice America points out that there are no other laws on the books in Alabama, or any other state, regulating what kind of medical procedures can be done within a certain proximity of a school.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/alabama-abortion-clinics-schools-sex-offenders-bill
Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy in Atlanta
Thursday 12 May 2016 23.11 BST
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