VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Controversial televangelist Pat Robertson stated via his “700 Club” broadcast on Wednesday that he believes Alabama’s recently passed “Human Life Protection Act” goes too far because of its severe penalties for abortionists and its lack of exceptions for rape and incest.
“I think Alabama has gone too far,” he said. “They would give a 99-year prison sentence to people who commit an abortion, [and] there’s no exception for rape or incest. It’s an extreme law.”
As previously reported, House Bill 314 says that “[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally perform or attempt to perform an abortion except … if an attending physician licensed in Alabama determines that an abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother.”
The performance of an abortion outside of the exception would be a class A felony. However, “[n]o woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed shall be criminally or civilly liable.”
Read the bill in full here, which has now been signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey.
“The heart of this bill is to confront a decision that was made by the courts in 1973 that said the baby in the womb is not a person,” main sponsor Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, outlined during debate on the legislation. “This bill addresses that one issue. Is that baby in the womb a person? I believe our law says it is.”
Robertson acknowledged during today’s broadcast that the bill is a challenge to Roe, but said that “my humble view is this is not the case we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose.”
He stated that he believes Roe was a “phony case” and an “ACLU job,” noting that plaintiff Norma McCorvey later disavowed abortion completely. Robertson also decried the “extreme” practice of partial birth abortion and expressed concern about the ramifications of a recently passed bill in Vermont that establishes abortion as a fundamental right.
“We’ve aborted over 60 million babies since Roe v. Wade and the restrictions on any kind of abortion have been extraordinary,” he said. “But the Alabama case — God bless them — they’re trying to do something, but I don’t think that’s the case we’d want to bring to the Supreme Court.”
View Robertson’s comments here beginning at 9:37 into the broadcast.
While some, such as Robertson, view the U.S. Supreme Court as the final arbiter in the matter, others note that the court is not God.
“The idea that we are to always obey the civil government because it is appointed by God is absurd. The subjugation they are due is not without limits,” wrote Matt Trewhella, a pastor and leader of a pro-life ministry, in his book “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates.” “When they pervert their God-given role and function and begin to reward those who do evil and punish those who do good, … we have no duty to obey them. Rather, we have a duty to do obey God.”
“The interposition of the lesser magistrate is … critically important for the protection of life. … Abortion is a clear violation of God’s law. The Scripture declares, ‘You shall not murder,'” he outlined. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, as well as its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, represent unjust and immoral rulings because they contravene the law of God. On this matter, the lesser magistrates are clearly obligated to resist and actively oppose the federal government.”
As previously reported, Robertson has made a number of remarks on his broadcast that have been considered to be controversial. Last month, Robertson responded to a viewer’s question about her church’s teaching on the age of the earth by remarking that young earth creationism is “embarrassing.”
“Well, the truth is the dinosaurs were extinct maybe … about 50 billion years ago, and this planet has been [around] much longer than that,” he asserted. “[T]his universe that we live in is about 14 billion years old and there’s no question about it. And we have tremendous geological records and all the rest of it. And that 6,000-year stuff just doesn’t compute.”
In 2012, Robertson responded to a viewer who was afraid that her husband and teenage sons might leave the faith, including because of questions they had surrounding the existence of dinosaurs.
“[I]f you fight revealed science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was,” Robertson remarked.
Robertson likewise generated outrage in 2011 when he counseled that a man who was having an affair should divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease and “start all over again” because the condition is “a kind of death.” In 2013, he stated that while he questions those who identify as transgender, he doesn’t see “any sin associated with” obtaining a sex-change operation.
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