Terri Collins is the Alabama lawmaker who sponsored a bill which may become the strictest anti-abortion law in the country. The Alabama Senate voted 25-6 for the bill, which would ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy. The bill would make it a felony to perform an abortion, with offenders penalized by up to 99 years in prison. The bill does not have an exception for rape or incest. It includes an exception for cases when the mother’s health is seriously at risk.
Here’s what you need to know about Terri Collins:
1. She Said She Would ‘Kill the Bill’ if it Included an Exception for Rape & Incest
Collins has said that she wants her bill to go all the way to the Supreme Court, where she hopes it will be a challenge to Roe v Wade. She said she didn’t want the bill to include any exception for rape or incest, because she wanted to make the case that, in her words, “the baby in the womb is a person.” She said she wanted the bill to directly confront Roe v Wade which, she said, “decided that the baby in the womb was not a person.”
Collins said that she would “kill the bill” if it were amended to include an exception for rape and incest. She said:
“The biggest thing to attack it with is to say, ‘What, you’re not going to include rape and incest?’” she explained. “Well, how do we say, ‘The baby inside is a person unless they’re conceived in rape or incest’? If that amendment was to get on the bill, then I’ll kill the bill because it won’t go to the Supreme Court. It will contradict itself. And so that’s why we’re trying to keep it clean, and we’re fighting with the Senate, which is what the House does. So, we’ll see what happens on Tuesday. Stay tuned.”
2. She Spent 16 Years Working as a Vice President at First American Bank
Collins joined the Alabama State Legislature in 2010, when she won a seat in the Alabama State House of Representatives. Prior to that, she spent 16 years working as the Vice President of Marketing and Sales for First American Bank.
Collins has a degree in marketing from the University of Alabama. She graduated in 1980.
3. She & Her Husband Tom Have Three Children
Collins was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She says that he met her husband, Tom, when they were both students at the University of Alabama. The couple got married and settled down in Decatur in 1982. That’s where they raised their three children. Collins worked as a bank executive for 16 years and then ran for a seat in the Alabama State House of Representatives in 2010.
4. She Sits on the Board of the Children’s Fund of Alabama
Collins is the chair of the board for the Children’s Fund of Alabama. The group works to prevent child abuse and child neglect. According to their website, the organization “secures resources to fund evidence-based community programs committed to the prevention of child maltreatment. We advocate for children and the strengthening of families.”
Collins also serves on the Education Ways and Means Committee and is the Chair of the Education Policy Committee. She was appointed to the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board by the Governor.
5. She Has Been Honored for Her Advocacy on Behalf of Alabama Trails
In 2015, Collins won an award from American Trails, a conservationist group dedicated to “supporting, promoting and building our diverse trails.”
The group said that several new trails, Rock Ridge Equestrian Trail and the Richard Martin Rail Trail, as well as some bike trails, had been created in her district duuring her tenure as state representative. American Trails said that Collins had been “instrumental in helping state trails and the Alabama Trails Commission with state legislation.”