MONTGOMERY — Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has joined nine other attorney generals in supporting an initiative to codify the definition of a “woman” and other sex-based terms.

The initiative, called the Women’s Bill of Rights, was prompted in March of this year by Independent Women’s Voice and urges codifying the definitions of woman, girl and mother to to distinguish between the sexes with respect to “athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms, and other areas where biology, safety, and/or privacy are implicated.”

“We are proud to sign the Women’s Bill of Rights, which simply and commonsensically defines terms like ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘male’ and ‘female,’ and protects the legal rights and equal opportunities of women and girls,” said Katherine Robertson, chief counsel to Attorney General Steve Marshall. “Women of every political persuasion are deeply troubled by the ongoing degradation of womanhood and women’s rights at the hands of the left, who profane females as being merely ‘birthing bodies’ and find it impossible to define what a woman is.”

Inconsistencies in court rulings and policy initiatives with respect to the definitions of “sex, male, female, man and woman” have led to endangerment of single-sex spaces and resources, necessitating clarification of such terms, the WBOR states.

The WBOR push comes during a year of states’ laws targeting transgender men and women. The Human Rights Campaign — the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy and lobbying group — tracked more than 340 bills introduced in state legislatures this year that have “harmful” impacts for the LGBTQ+ community.

The group tracked 24 restrictive LGBTQ+ bills passed into law in 13 states, including two in Alabama and four in Georgia.

Cathryn Oakley, HRC’s state legislative director and senior counsel, said Alabama “passed the most anti-transgender legislative package that we have ever seen from a state in history.”

Alabama’s HB 322 requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their biological gender and also prohibits teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with students in grades K-5.

SB 184 bans gender-affirming treatment to transgender youth in the state, punishing doctors who perform those services with up to 10 years in prison. The bill also mandates school officials report to parents or guardians “information related to a minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with his or her sex.”

Eleven states — including Georgia and Tennessee — passed laws prohibiting transgender students from playing on a team that matches their gender-identity.

In Georgia, HB 1084 prohibits transgender students from playing on teams matching their gender identity; HB 1178 requires school districts to provide procedures for a parent or guardian to withdraw their child from specific course curriculum, including gender or sexuality topics, while SB 226 allows for the creation of a process to remove “harmful materials” from schools that could include books and materials pertaining to sex, sexuality, gender and race.

Subsequent to the WBOR petition, members of Congress also introduced a WBOR resolution in May to affirm legal protections of women. The WBOR seeks define a woman as the sex defined at birth and notes biological differences between the two sexes including strength and birthing abilities.

“I am proud to have stood alongside nine other Attorney Generals this week in signing the Women’s Bill of Rights,” said Marshall. “Alabama is proud to support this national effort, and we hope other states will join us in this effort.”

As of Sept. 6, the Independent Women’s Voice’s Women’s Bill of Rights has been signed by more than 11,100 people including Alabama state Rep. Barry Moore, and attorneys general for Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Utah, Montana, West Virginia and South Carolina.

While Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has not yet signed onto the WBOR, he was among more than a dozen attorneys general to sign against the Biden administration’s plans to redefine biological sex to include gender identity, and rewrite Title IX, which protects people from discrimination based on sex in educational programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.