Before the abortion ban, Gov. Kay Ivey tested a deeply conservative agenda in Alabama [View all]

[IronLionZion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/16/before-abortion-ban-gov-kay-ivey-tested-deeply-conservative-agenda-alabama/?utm_term=.f2b881dae825

With a quick scribble of her pen Wednesday afternoon, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) essentially made abortion in her state illegal in all circumstances, with zero exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors who perform the procedure face a penalty of up to 99 years in prison.

As other Republican-controlled states are rubber-stamping abortion restrictions in a legal gambit to challenge Roe v. Wade, Alabama’s new law has left even some staunch abortion opponents tepid. On Wednesday, televangelist Pat Robertson called the bill “extreme” and said Alabama politicians had “gone too far.”

But it’s also no surprise the nation’s most stringent abortion law came out of Alabama. Since 2010, the state’s Republican Party has had a supermajority in both houses of the legislature. Republicans also control all statewide offices. Ivey’s reelection in 2018 to her first full term continued the GOP’s easy grip on the state’s levers of power.

And under Ivey’s watch, Alabama has been at the forefront of conservative legislation, passing laws that would face tougher opposition in states with a more robust Democratic presence.

From guns in schools to gay rights to the death penalty to Confederate monuments, the governor has signed laws from the conservative movement’s wish list, turning the Alabama into a test kitchen for an unopposed GOP agenda. The track record has turned Ivey, a quiet veteran of state politics who eschews the carnival barker-antics that typically land governors in the national spotlight, into a front-line figure in the culture war.

Any state that is ranked 50th in education, clearly doesn't give a shit about children.

Alabama has always been conservative but is enacting more extreme laws without any opposition.