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Alabama’s senior senator on Tuesday claimed parents who raise transgender children are committing “child abuse,” suggesting that trans kids “should live in fear of their parents,” not the government.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s tweet on Tuesday came in response to the Episcopalian bishop who implored the Trump administration to “have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

“You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” said the Right Rev. Marian Budde, who has criticized Trump before and is the Episcopal bishop of Washington, during the national prayer service at the National Cathedral.

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said.

Tuberville suggested “trans children” should be more scared of those who raise them than the government.

“These ‘trans children’ should live in fear of their parents and the sick people that enable those ‘guardians’. It’s child abuse. An absolute disgrace.” the senator tweeted while posting the video of Budde’s remarks.

The Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition said Tuberville’s remark goes against Christian teachings.

“Tuberville’s suggestion that trans children should be scared of their parents when they already experience greater rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation is antithetical to Jesus’ directive to treat others as you would have them treat yourself. Trans youth already face bullying at a much higher rate than their cisgender peers, and they certainly don’t need a US senator adding to that harassment,” the group said.

State lawmakers “have already stripped trans kids of the simple dignity, freedom of expression, and access to healthcare that cisgender children already enjoy. These kids want nothing more than to be themselves, and to be left alone by the state,” the organization continued.

Tuberville’s tweet came a day after Trump signed an executive order declaring there are only two genders.

The order drew the condemnation of multiple LGBTQ advocacy groups in Alabama.

“We take the remark to be a denial of all trans folks’ lived experiences, especially within the context of expected executive actions,” the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition, said Monday in an email to AL.com. “Science and medicine affirm the existence of a whole spectrum of gender that includes cisgender and transgender people alike. The administration’s stance on this benefits no one, and contradicts widely accepted medical best practice.”

“Transgender people (including nonbinary folks) exist in Alabama, and many are born here — and we just want to be free to participate in society like everyone else,” the advocacy group said in an email to AL.com.

Former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has released a new single, and it's an affectionate look back at his time with the band.

Called Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway, the single's YouTube thumbnail is a picture of the original Van Halen line-up, while the song itself – a wistful affair with a touch of Crosby, Stills & Nash about it – features lyrics that relate to Roth's time with the band.

Highlights include, "We laughed, we cried, we threw the television off that balcony. That memory means so much to me", "Remember when you safety pinned the tablecloth to my pants" and "Kicked out the restaurant to make the night complete, six pack and a happy meal on a park bench down the street."

The song comes from acoustic sessions Roth recorded with guitarist John 5 in 2007, alongside Skyscraper-era Roth band drummer Gregg Bissonette and keyboardist Brett Tuggle. Later, John told Guitar World that the sessions had resulted in an album's worth of material.

"Dave and I have about 12 or 13 songs in the can for a future record," John 5 said. "And it’s all acoustic. But not strummy, campfire stuff – I’m talking lots of cool, crazy jazz chords, and 50 or 60 overdubbed guitar tracks, with all this harmonising and other weird stuff going on. Dave’s vocals are incredible. He sings his ass off."

Other songs to have emerged from the sessions include Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bar and Grill, which Roth released in 2020, and Giddy-Up, which came out in May last year, but it's Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway that excites John 5.

"It’s unbelievable," he told al.com last year. "Being a Van Halen fan and a Dave Lee Roth fan, it’s unbelievable because it’s about Dave singing about Van Halen and what it was like. Really something special, so I really hope that comes out."

AL.com cartoonist J.D. Crowe is a Drew Brees fan. After Brees set the NFL career passing record Monday night at the Superdome, Crowe created this cartoon.

Al.com

One week after the federal government made it easier to get abortion pills, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Tuesday that women in Alabama who use those pills to end pregnancies could be prosecuted.

That’s despite wording in Alabama’s new Human Life Protection Act that criminalizes abortion providers and prevents its use against the people receiving abortions. Instead, the attorney general’s office said Alabama could rely on an older law, one initially designed to protect children from meth lab fumes.

“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall said in an emailed statement. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law—which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children.”

The announcement followed changes last week to regulations of two medications commonly prescribed for abortion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized a change that will allow brick-and-mortar and mail-order pharmacies to dispense mifepristone and misoprostol, two drugs used in more than half of abortions in the United States.

Before the change, people using medication for abortions had to pick it up at specialty clinics. Officials at the U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion that carriers with the U.S. Postal Service could deliver pills in states that banned abortion. The new rules will expand access through telehealth and mail-order pharmacies but could set up clashes with anti-abortion states such as Alabama.

Marshall has said in the past his office could prosecute doctors with U.S. Veterans Affairs who perform abortions for victims of rape or incest. He has also said people who assist in setting up out-of-state abortions could face criminal penalties. This is the first time he has said police and prosecutors could arrest women who have undergone medication abortion.

“Promoting the remote prescription and administration of abortion pills endangers both women and unborn children,” Marshall said in an email. “Elective abortion—including abortion pills—is illegal in Alabama. Nothing about the Justice Department’s guidance changes that. Anyone who remotely prescribes abortion pills in Alabama does so at their own peril: I will vigorously enforce Alabama law to protect unborn life.”

In 2019, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Human Life Protection Act, which banned abortion except in cases where the mother’s health is in danger. That law went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last summer.

The law specifically states that women receiving abortions cannot be held criminally liable. However, Marshall said women using pills to induce abortions could be prosecuted under the chemical endangerment law.

Lawmakers passed the chemical endangerment law in 2006 to protect small children from fumes and chemicals from home-based meth labs. District attorneys soon began applying the law to protect the fetuses of women who used various drugs during pregnancy. Justices on the Alabama Supreme Court upheld and affirmed prosecutions of pregnant people in 2013 and 2014.

Since then, the law has been used against more than a thousand Alabama women who used drugs during pregnancy. Its enforcement varies widely. District attorneys in some counties rarely apply the law to pregnant women, while others routinely arrest those who use any illegal substance, including marijuana, while pregnant.

The chemical endangerment law has been used to incarcerate women for years who have had miscarriages or stillbirths after using drugs. Etowah County officials jailed pregnant women for months before trial under bond conditions designed to protect fetuses, despite evidence that incarceration increases the risk of pregnancy loss. After the publication of an investigative series in 2015 by ProPublica and Al.com, lawmakers voted to amend the law so it couldn’t be used against women who had lawful prescriptions from doctors.

Attorneys with Pregnancy Justice, a legal organization that represents pregnant women, have fought efforts to criminalize pregnancy and abortion. Emma Roth, a staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, said prosecutors have already twisted the chemical endangerment law so it can be used against pregnant women. Using the law to go after those who use medications to induce abortions could be unlawful and would undermine the goals of lawmakers who voted for the Human Life Protection Act, she said.

“The Alabama legislature made clear its opposition to any such prosecution when it explicitly exempted patients from criminal liability under its abortion ban,” Roth said in an email. “Yet Alabama prosecutors and courts have shown a willingness to disregard legislative intent time and again in their crusade to criminalize pregnant women. Pregnancy Justice stands ready to challenge any attempt to expand the chemical endangerment statute to criminalize the use of abortion medication.”

JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, said women have the right to receive prescriptions from out-of-state doctors.