An Alabama law that will take effect Sept. 1 requires judges to eliminate the parental rights of offenders who conceive children through first-degree rape.
Prior to this mandate, the state was accused of allowing rapists to keep custody of their children.
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However, Gina Maiola, press secretary for Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, said that the state already had a general statute permitting judges to terminate parental rights for people they deem unfit.
Will Dismukes, a Republican representative from Alabama, introduced Jessi’s Law, which removes parental rights of people who sexually assault their own children. This came as a result of a girl who was raped by her own biological father.
Dismukes pointed out the difference between these two laws, saying in a press release, “Now it’s mandated that if you’re convicted of rape or incest, that you lose your parental rights. You’re not protected. The judges have always had the discretion, but this just makes it where you lose them.”
He went on to say that Jessi’s Law had nothing to do with the recent passing of the abortion ban.
The bill summary of Jessi’s Law states that it will “require a juvenile court to find that a parent is unable to properly care for a child and to discharge his or her responsibilities to and for the child in any case where the parent has received a conviction for the crime against the child of rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, or incest, and shall terminate the parental rights of the parent.”
