Alabama AG sought to bar interstate travel for women

Author

Kay W.
April 02, 2025

Alabama sought to prosecute pregnant women and/or the people who help pregnant women when those women leave the state to get an abortion. A lot of women are leaving the state to get abortions - a nonprofit in Alabama receives 95 calls a week requesting help on finding a provider to do an abortion.

The nonprofit getting all those desperate calls (“Yellowhammer Fund”) sued, citing the federal right to travel and the First Amendment. The First Amendment violation got my attention, because the far Right are banning a lot of speech they don’t like and imprisoning people for political speech violations.

Here’s the First Amendment violation:

Because Yellowhammer Fund’s abortion-funding program is expressive conduct, the court’s First Amendment analysis regarding the plaintiffs’ freedom of speech also applies to this conduct. Accordingly, the court finds that the Attorney General’s threats violate Yellowhammer Fund’s right to expressive conduct and cannot withstand strict scrutiny.

Yellowhammer (the nonprofit) believe that women are autonomous human beings with a full set of rights. Yellowhammer expresses these beliefs by funding abortions where abortion is legal. The Right disagrees, believing instead that women have a truncated set of rights that don’t include the right to travel. The Right wants to bar this expressive conduct and silence Yellowhammer. The Court said no, the Right cannot silence the view that women are people with a full set of rights.

This part is amusing:

The Court has found that the Attorney General‘s threatened prosecutions violate the right to travel and the First Amendment. But the broader, practical implications of the Attorney General‘s threats should not be overlooked.

If Alabama held the power its Attorney General asserts here, it is hard to envision a limiting principle besides what the Attorney General personally sees as permissible and impermissible. It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard. It is another thing for the State to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the Attorney General, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another State to engage in conduct that is lawful there but the Attorney General finds to be contrary to Alabama’s values and laws.

 For example, the Alabama Attorney General would have within his reach the authority to prosecute Alabamians planning a Las Vegas bachelor party, complete with casinos and gambling, since casino-style gambling is outlawed in Alabama. As the adage goes, be careful what you pray for.

Here’s the Yellowhammer Fund:

The Yellowhammer Fund is a 501(c)3 abortion advocacy and reproductive justice organization serving Alabama, Mississippi, and the Deep South. We envision a society in which reproductive decisions are made free from coercion, shame, or state interference, a society in which individuals and communities have autonomy in making healthy choices regarding their bodies and their futures.

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