The facially false, partisan “lies” about statewide Amendment Two have been backed by almost $1.5 million in out-of-state, dark money spending led by Planned Parenthood, with the dishonesty getting worse and worse as Tuesday’s election approached.
On Monday, the worst “lies” yet emerged, this time from the “National Advocates for Pregnant Women” (NAPW) in New York, whose main goal seems to be allowing women to terminate their pregnancies.
In a flier posted on social media, NAPW claims, “If Amendment 2 passes, police, prosecutors, judges, and other state employees would have new legal authority to use numerous Alabama laws as a basis for arresting, detaining, or controlling a woman who becomes pregnant.”
There is no nuance or gray area here — this is absurdly, and maliciously, false. As are the rest of the specific items on the flier (under the subtitle, “Who Will Be Hurt?”).
The flier claims that women who “experience stillbirth or miscarriage,” “have home births” or “disagree with their doctor’s advice” will be amongst those “hurt” by the pro-life amendment.
These falsehoods are out-of-left-field on their own, but NAPW takes it a step further by claiming women will be “locked up because they had a pregnancy loss, home birth or abortion.”
The flier is simply not true and, hopefully for voters, wholly unbelievable. However, to make the matter much worse, the Associated Press (AP) wrote an article Monday propping up NAPW as an “advocacy group,” publishing that the amendment “would have broad ramifications for civil and criminal law beyond abortion access.”
The objective Fair Ballot Commission confirmed that this is entirely incorrect, yet their position was nowhere to be found in the AP’s article. While the publication (thankfully) did not publish the entire flier, giving any credence to the NAPW as a source of information on the amendment was reckless and a disservice to all of Alabama’s voters.
Watch Yellowhammer News’ live election night coverage closely to see if this type of outlandish smearing of Amendment Two will pay off for Planned Parenthood, its out-of-state liberal allies and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Walt Maddox.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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