says rebels used machetes on civilians and looted shops and homes police say it's revenge for the army's offensive against rebel strongholds but counting has begun in sri lanka's presidential election that has seen rising religious tensions and a slowing economy take center stage former defense minister got a rajapaksa and. the 2 main candidates national security is a main talking point on the campaign trial u.s. president donald trump has pardoned 2 army officers accused of war crimes in afghanistan trump also restored the rank of a navy seal platoon commander convicted of misconduct critics say the move could undermine military justice those are the headlines and news continues here on al-jazeera after a fall lots. you

know george other governor is poised to so i want to the most restrictive it to abortion laws in the country missouri state senate passed an 8 week abortion ban containing no exceptions for victims of brave incest you're going to crimes are right on the heels of alabama's even stricter legislation in 20199 u.s. states passed laws that would ban abortion in the beginning stages of pregnancy as early as 6 weeks before many women even know they're pregnant. the state of georgia recognize the benefits of providing all legal recognition i'm born child alabama went the furthest and banned the procedure from the moment of conception. just a few years ago the bills were considered politically toxic. and extreme proposal by a fringe element of the anti-abortion movement over 60000000 innocent babies have illegally

made it a bed. this is a crime against humanity and a sin against god this but this year they swept through republican controlled state houses and were signed into law. the laws are being challenged in court and none are yet in a fact at all judge has blocked ohio's and so called it all heartbeat law this bill is not about pro life. this bill is about control. for the 1st time this state will make georgia women criminals criminals for seeking basic reproductive care ok. these laws are part of a strategy. to challenge roe v wade the supreme court decision that made abortion legal across the country almost 50 years ago do you think a majority of people in georgia wanted this bill to pass the heart no absolutely

not was this law written to challenge roe yes of course it was faultlines travels to alabama and georgia 2 of the states on the front lines of this battle. more so for next saturday the 70 7 45 in the morning to ask what's at stake when access to abortion is under threat and how far can these laws go. if you think. that people i mean this bill would create a new pathway to criminalize black and brown women which you've already seen the disappoint the facts in the criminal justice system these are the latest attempts not merely to overturn roe v wade and the right to choose abortion they are about stablish hang in the law the fact that women have a 2nd class. alabama

has become ground 0 for the country's it illogical battle over abortion. and the fight over what should prevail the rights of women or the unborn. babies already have a part. in may the state passed the most restrictive abortion law in the country banning it in nearly all cases including rape and incest. it's the latest chapter in the anti-abortion movement's decades long campaign to end abortion i just found this on the fair way down there one of the by dollars thing. they handed out yeah they'll try to like tell you that's what your papers. for years they've chipped away at abortion access by pushing for laws that make operating clinics difficult if not impossible. and they've succeeded. 50 clinics closed in the american

south between 20112017. under the new legislation doctors who perform abortions could face up to 99 years in prison. our . newest pain is the main abortion provider here and has been a doctor for 50 years. has your clinic ever experienced any kind of threats or as anything ever happened yeah we've had you know the arson far it was total destruction of 7 and they always had the all weather shot out there we had to get out it drove his car into the way or. the new laws could have far reaching implications not only for abortion clinics but for anyone who becomes pregnant. they're part of a fetal personhood movement which seeks to give fertilized eggs embryos and fetuses the same legal rights as people. for all of. us.

we follow that as you will see. that little our own what we're trying to follow science is sorry for this great city ambrose's south it is to follow cedars earlier you know or certainly. you know the 1973 supreme court ruling roe v wade said that states can't restrict a woman's right to an abortion until the fetus becomes viable and can survive outside the uterus according to the ruling that can start at 24 weeks but the supreme court sidestepped the question of personhood and refused to quote resolve the difficult question of when life begins and that's where eric johnston a lawyer who drafted alabama's bill saw an opening that of medical science can prove that the unborn child is a person that gets the rights of the constitution and i think that higher purpose in our wall in alabama is to approach it that way you know they didn't have the

sonograms and the ultrasounds in the fetal for godfrey that we have now. it's women like nora a 20 year old student who would be directly impacted by this law. i'm getting an abortion. and i'm choosing the surgical procedure. because. she's 5 weeks pregnant but as i have seen author sound like the size of a pea. and i'm brain of the heartbeat like it's not anything that's actually living god please let me throw it back to the. right. most people saying the stuff it's men and so they don't understand that for sponsibility and pressure that puts on women to say that anything that this idea is now like your responsibility and you have to give birth to it and might carry that for the rest of your life. and it's also saying a fetus. isn't only equal to woman but it's like more important than

a woman's purse and hide behind like i mean i don't get to change the world. what would it mean for you if you didn't have the option to have an abortion right now and now i'm probably drop out of school unlike probably moved back home in love with my mom and. nightmare situation yeah i don't know what i would do. at home at the back would be really dangerous oh no sir no house thinks this is the rest of her safe for us if these abortion bans go into effect it would mean going back to a time before abortion was legal nationwide. dr payne who's 80 remembers that time well because there were a lot of illegal abortions. a lot of a lose their uterus lose their o. reproductive ability and that's the way it was back then and that's what. but

it won't ever go back to that because they're not going to outlaw abortion. but opposed to a world that is what johnson was imagining when he wrote alabama's bill in the summer of 20 teens as president trump was gearing up to nominate conservative judge brett kavanaugh to the supreme court. were you thinking this is our moment not necessarily i was thinking that the circumstances are bad as favorable as they may ever be there are several factors that are brought us through that probably the biggest ones would be to new justices on the supreme court we think that they are likely to reverse roe if given the opportunity and that's right 2019 all of a sudden like a year or shed year for these kinds of laws in roe there were 2 competing concepts one was the privacy rights the individual rights of the woman the other was the rights of the unborn child and the u.s. supreme court they will since the. child is not

a person then the woman within her rights to privacy has a right to have an abortion. and that the unborn child is a person then that trumps the rights of the woman because the rights of 2 individuals. fat's a fiction. the fact is that as long as that life is inside of another human being there is no way to treat it as a matter of laws if it separate with out taking away the personhood of the pregnant woman what has been called the fetal personhood movement is an attempt by political activists to establish as a matter of law separate rights for fertilized eggs embryos and fetuses so that police and prosecutors and legislators husbands and other outsiders can control the people who get pregnant women.

if alabama provided fertile ground for shaping the country's most extreme anti-abortion law georgia has become the center of the resistance. in may lawmakers here passed a so-called heartbeat bill effectively banning abortion at around 6 weeks. any bill that outloud or restricts a woman's right to access abortion care is a bill that is calling for the policies of forced birthing for women. and we do not need your condescending bills that challenge our bodily autonomy one of the most fervent opponents was state representative grenada shannon as soon as this bill was introduced i immediately called it what it is which is the forced birthing bill for the women of georgia and i promised myself that if this bill hit the floor

i would speak so long i would force the speaker of the house to physically remove me and other health professionals the lines were short lived with a woman on their own hermano x. that they be now this way around in the context of this she descended on the grounds that black women would be hit hardest by the ban wire is protected and in terms of number fashion of literacy maternal mortality tracks women dying due to complications related to pregnancy up to a year after giving birth and if you look at countries that have outlawed abortion immediately you see a spike sometimes up to 50 percent of more women dying in maternal mortality and black women are already $3.00 to $4.00 times more likely to die than their white counterparts. and it is the reason why black and brown women have come out so fiercely against this bill. the bills main sponsor was georgia representative and said slower the issue before this house is the question of when should human life be protected by the law we're trying to give recognition to disenfranchise groups

that had not gotten full and appropriate recognition in the past i think where the groups that's been ignored now for decades has been the unborn. the bill passed by a narrow margin and was signed into law by the state's republican governor brian can't. he another georgia officials are now being sued in an effort to stop the law . kemp's office declined repeated requests for an interview governor can't come in or can't type question the 1st lady so we did the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is sister song. a social justice collective focused on reproductive health led by women of color. a little bit. monica simpson is their executive director she's also a soul singer. the

lawsuit argues that black low income and rural women would be disproportionately impacted by the abortion ban and points out that black women in particular face some of the highest pregnancy related deaths in the country. the legacy of forced reproduction under slavery still looms large. we're talking about being able to make decisions for ourselves make you citizens for our bodies. because what i refuse to do is to go back to a day where our states are controlling our bodies that sounds like a very scary time to my ancestors lived through that allowed need to be here today and i'm not going back. since black people arrived in this country we have effectively had white men telling us what to do with our bodies in slave time and we were forced bred to

create more slaves we were raped by slave masters so this is par for the course and we see the same thing by a party that is majority white men again now trying to tell black and brown women especially what is best for their bodies. this is like you decide this is in the us if the people want to live they will build it speak with us but we do know. that right abortion rates have been falling for more than a decade across racial groups and income levels. but if you believe that your ability to get a. woman of color and those living in poverty are more likely than their white counterparts to have abortions that's because they're less likely to have access to quality contraception health care. things are there when you come here and you hear

people like him. saying that they'll take your baby and then how are you going to do that with. the anti-abortion movement has used these statistics to claim that women of color are being targeted for abortion is not worth it to the other. thing. i have not seen pro-life people. i have not seen them act. maternal health conference but we're talking about creating the best outcomes for folks who are pregnant and i have not seen them talking about economic justice or environmental justice they're not talking about any of that they're talking about fetuses. that anything you need if you were just in the bay and we just. and if you only care about a fetus that you don't care about the world at that fetus would have to live in or if you don't care about the life of the person that carrying that fetus then you

are not about like. all the things i'm going to do here. for the woman you know. people who do not understand or subscribe to this commitment to reproductive justice are trying anything they can to deny us the ability to have. it's not just as narrow as have a baby or don't have a baby. having an abortion at one point in their lives might be the very thing that helps them to grow their families later. look at you our news come in and want to do some big. this is absolutely a civil rights issue. but reproductive justice advocates so we talked to said they feel that black women and women of color are some of the most negatively impacted by your bill they say that this is an example of white men telling black women what they can do with their bodies it's a false promise to reject the sort of. that's your answer to them it's

a false promise you know we as a legislature responding to a very diverse it's amazing the people who they think they're speaking for that support. these lawmakers say that they are protecting life. so what is your response then whose life whose life are you concerned that you don't have to dehumanised the pregnant person and in order to assign humanity to the cells that are growing inside of her. if these fetal personhood laws are allowed to move forward there's concern it could open a pandora's box from that of 3 weeks but right now a pregnant woman would legally be considered 2 people and states would have more power to charge pregnant women for behavior that otherwise wouldn't be considered criminal. i'm feeling. this is your right and

it's. so borsch on advocates worry that this bill could end up criminalizing women that have miscarriages or abortions is that a legitimate concern but there's 0 legal basis for that. are women going to be criminalized for trying to end pregnancies themselves. you know the woman is not criminalize it's got a certain exemption for her. he's a lawyer on the border there are a whole bunch of other laws in alabama their murder statute there manslaughter statute their chemical in danger of a child statute their child abuse laws there's an innumerable practically a list of laws that could be used to arrest a pregnant woman all based on the theory separate rights for fetuses so excluding a rest from a single statute the abortion statute really means nothing especially in a state where women are already being arrested hundreds of them in relationship to

their pregnancy. but from alabama suffered a miscarriage after being shot about she's being charged with bad slaughter for the death of her unborn child since 1973 more than $1200.00 women have been arrested or detained in connection with their pregnancies according to data from the national advocates for pregnant. women and pro publica sent to prison. half of these cases were in alabama women who have had a home birth with a midwife women who have delayed having says arion surgery women who had stillbirths miscarriages or given birth to babies they couldn't guarantee would survive have been arrested for manslaughter and 1st degree murder and 2nd degree murder if you travel while pregnant it could be considered kidnapping not of these are hypotheticals these things are already happening. again do you think. that if a fish you get. katie dare of it says who lives in alabama is one of these women.

she suffered from severe epilepsy since she was a teen. as i go electricity store your brains get tay's by 100000 years and. years ago she became pregnant and then miscarried she says her doctor told her that anti-seizure medications could raise the risks of birth defects. when katie became pregnant again she stopped taking her medication. instead she relied on marijuana to help regulate her seizures thinking it posed the least risk to her unborn son time literally is looking at here you know you know after she gave birth and 2014 katie and her baby were both drug tested. it was about a week after i. had. been home i remember one morning i got

a phone call from her own play station asked me if i was home. and you count me in any way after that it's like barged in and we have been put in handcuffs. too big to take showed up with bulletproof vests like you know it is going on walk in on me i came i said there are certain places in my own house you know my you know ya'll are taking my wife away after she just gave birth you know i. am telling you how is you know i'm sorry i love you but i can't i can't i don't you know how i just to keep a hold of me. you know how long i was going to be in there exactly what they were going to charge me with. and. i was really scared that i wouldn't be able to see my family again. because they were they were talking about put me in prison for what like 15 to 20 years 10 years of her. what exactly were you charged with. chemical indulging that they were

child a law intended for people that were like cooking meth or. children you know which of course is bad you know but he tried to do what he thought was. good for our son and what i we're going to get is going to stave us. if i had a seizure i give a high percentage of both of us dying but it is higher for him to. get hurt. then me. in 2006 alabama passed its chemical endangerment of a child along. the architects of the law intended for it to protect children from homes where drugs were being made. the prosecutors and judges effectively turned it into a fetal personhood law. individual prosecutors thought i'm going to use that law as a mechanism for responding to pregnant women who use drugs. the state supreme court

about bama whose chief justice is deeply anti-abortion ruled that the law could apply to the unborn in the womb and once that law was upheld hundreds of women have since then been arrested based on the fact that they used any amount of any controlled substance and including ones that their physicians have legitimately appropriately prescribed to them. katie spent 8 days in jail her family says the case cost them more than $10000.00. other than her have an epilepsy she had a healthy pregnancy she had never been arrested she had never been in trouble. i think that we're the lucky ones. because. we was able to get katie's case dismissed with a lot of work and a lot of people on her side. what do you most concern about in this

political landscape i'm concerned that it's going to get worse nit picking and looking at the mother trying to see if she did something wrong. if someone has a stillbirth for them to start looking to see what the mother did wrong and i think that a lot of innocent women are going to get arrested before things change. if the concept of fetal personhood takes hold what's at stake for women goes far beyond abortion. with 2 supreme court justices appointed by donald trump it's a new era. and the future of reproductive rights is now in the hands of the most conservative court in decades. the nomination an appointment of cavanagh's deeply disturbing and not only because of the risk that roe v wade would be overturned and abortion might be criminalized but the much larger implications of

all that which is that women will go to jail. trying to imagine for like an hour what it would be like to be pregnant and have an abortion i don't think i can. i don't think. i'll be collaborating. these are laws that are really about a much larger agenda and it is an example of massaging me that itself can justify incredible cruelty to the people who get pregnant. white supremacist violence is on the rise in america he was about in this whole underground network hate full time speaks to the victims of recent attacks when he shot me. he were killed my daughter and i asks how an ideology of loathing has

found its way into the mainstream can you draw a through line between the rhetoric of president troll and the conservative media in america to what happened here in el paso license to hate on al-jazeera. on counting the cost with breaks it's make america great again to make in india are we seeing a backlash against globalization or is it just in the economic war plus francis richest man is worth more than 100 $1000000000.00 we find out if france is an unequal society counting the cost on al-jazeera.

al-jazeera. where ever you are. still angry violence in the french capital this protest is the anniversary of the yellow vests. this is al jazeera live also coming up it is the price of fuel and introduces rationing that is triggering protests. police and protesters face off in hong kong again confirms it ordered a.