Alabama widens the gap in gender equality

on 15th May 2019, Alabama passed an anti abortion law bill, making it a criminal offence to abort a fetus post 6-weeks old. This is regardless of any factor, including rape and incest. It has sparked lots of speculation, creating strong opinions around the topic. As an aspiring writer, I wanted to write a blog post that viewed journalistic approaches about the law and to see how different media platforms advocated either their "pro-life" and "pro-choice" message. So, I decided to look at the different online sources; researching how they wrote their articles, what language they used in order to relate to their audiences, based on both their beliefs.

Firstly though, I wanted to do some analytic research to get a better understanding of the severity of the law, who made it and why. Out of the 35 seats in the senate of Alabama, only 4 women have a place, all of which voted against the law. Despite this, the remaining seats occupied by men suggested that it would be a Class A crime, and that charging any woman would be justified and ethically right. What surprised me was female Governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, passed the law. She stated that "this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God." I realised through researching that this is not simply just a war against female rights, its also a war on human rights, conditioned by religion. Ivey's propaganda style of writing implores her fellow residents of Alabama to agree with her decisions by passively threatening them with God and his acceptance of them.

"We must give every person the best chance for a quality life and a promising future.”

This is counter-argument to abortion is highly controversial and contradicting. A pro-life institution American's United for Life contributes to the campaign. their mission statement: " Americans United for Life protects and defends human life from conception to natural death through vigorous legislative, judicial, and educational efforts."

It's interesting to see the pro-life campaigns and their journalistic strategies are to encourage people to help campaign and defend helpless children in the womb. But what is so brilliantly ironic is that they are not defending the life of the woman who has a right to her own body, and has a right to a life she wants. The excuses pro-lifers unveil are inadequate and contradictory to their arguments, and it simply shows their lack of compassion for women, denying them equal rights.

Abortion News is a pro-choice, online news platform that shares news bulletins regarding abortion, videos, media content such as podcasts and blogs, and many other media platforms. They provide an archive of different articles relating to the topic around the globe, so i researched further into the work they covered regarding Alabama. Aljazeera: Fault Lines, a media coverage website, created a short film called The Abortion Bans which uncovers the story about the law and its impact it makes on the community, particularly women,

"This bill is not about Pro-Life, this is about control."

The film explains that this bill proves that "women have a second class status" in America. Its clear that Pro-lifer's and Pro-choicer's have a long way to go in terms of agreeing with each others beliefs. But after delving deeper into how each argument projects their views, its clear there is a much bigger issue with pro-life and their reasons behind saving the lives of others, its clear to see they forget to take into account the life of the woman.

As an aspiring media marketer or writer it was important for me to do this research, as it showed that certain journals and online sources cater to their audiences' beliefs to even extreme cases such as the Alabama abortion laws. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, your decision and opinion can easily be influenced by the media, based on how well the writer portrays the narrative.