Alabama lawmakers try and outline ‘what is a woman’

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday superior laws that might outline who’s acknowledged as feminine and male underneath state regulation.

The House Health Committee voted alongside get together traces to approve the “What is a Woman Act” and ship the laws to the complete House of Representatives. The invoice is just like measures launched in a number of GOP-controlled states and would base the definitions off an individual’s reproductive methods.

Republican Rep. Susan Dubose, the invoice’s sponsor, argued the definitions are wanted to guard “women’s spaces” equivalent to dorm rooms. She stated the phrases female and male seem regularly in regulation with out being outlined.

“Activists have sought to redefine these words and separate sex from biology,” Dubose stated when she launched the invoice final week.

The invoice defines a feminine and girl as an “individual whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova” and a male and man as an “individual whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.” The invoice states that you will need to “distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, bathrooms” and different areas.

The invoice drew heavy opposition throughout a public listening to final week the place a number of transgender girls known as the invoice an assault on their help.

Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey, Alabama state director Human Rights Campaign, in an announcement Wednesday known as the invoice the “LGBTQ+ Erasure Act” that “aims to strip away dozens of legal protections and rights for LGBTQ+ Alabamians.”