NEW ORLEANS - Alexandra Seghers is the Legislative Liaison and Youth Program Director with Louisiana Right to Life. She strongly feels protecting and defending children in the womb is exactly what the state's new abortion ban does.
"The heart is beating twice as fast as the mothers, and especially with abortion, that gruesomely crushes the body! Crushes all those things and ends that life," Seghers said.
The bill, which Governor John Bel Edwards signed last weeks gives a prison sentence up to two years to someone who performs an abortion after 15 weeks.
Before it is enacted, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has to decide whether a similar bill passed earlier this year in Mississippi is unconstitutional.
Harris is the Director of Reproductive Health at Women with a Vision. The organization helps women, primarily women of color who have been raped, abused, sexually assaulted or are domestic violence survivors. For the women she serves, Harris calls this law is problematic.
"It doesn't even have a provision for people who find themselves for people who've been sexually assaulted or raped," Harris said.
Which is why Seghers says adoption is always a good option for women facing an unwanted pregnancy.
"There's been the passage of the Adoption Option Act. And this empowers women, especially in those instances where she may not feel ready to parent. Where she's scared. Where she feels alone. It'll help give her concrete alternatives to abortion so she doesn't have to subject her body to the trauma of abortion...or subject her baby to the trauma of abortion," Seghers said.
"Governor Edwards signed a bill, he was just trying to push adoption versus getting an abortion, and I was just like...you know, how many African American babies are being adopted? According to national statistics, only 16 percent of African American are Black babies are adopted. Adoption agencies are actually lowering the fees associating with adopting Black children because they're not getting adoption in the rate....so this is not a viable avenue for African American children," Harris said.
The women having an abortion would not be charged under this law. Only those who perform the abortion.
There's no word on when the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the Mississippi abortion law.