Alabama is the latest state where a pro-life piece of legislation to ban dismemberment abortions is advancing and yesterday the legislature approved a bill to make it the 5th state to ban the grisly abortion procedure. The law would follow on the heels of states like Kansas and Oklahoma as well as Mississippi and Louisiana — where bans have are been approved or are advancing through the legislature.
Yesterday, the state House approved the Senate-passed bill SB363 but only after members of the Black caucus complained about legislative leaders ending debate on the bill.
Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard twice called for security to the chamber in the final hours of the legislative session as the Democrats opposing the bills said the Republican-held chamber was unfairly blocking their debate.
“You have no right to continue to cut out debate,” Democratic Rep. Mary Moore said. “That’s what the process is all about. That’s what makes democracy different than dictatorships.”
After Hubbard attempted to move forward with a floor vote on the first abortion bill, members of the House Black Caucus gathered in the chamber well to sing several refrains of “We Shall Overcome.”
Hubbard called for security when he said members couldn’t hear for the floor vote. Shouts erupted when Republican Rep. Mike Ball entered the well amid the singing to speak with caucus members. Hubbard again called for security, but no one was escorted from the chamber.
Moore later said the singing was not “entertainment,” but a reference to the events many black legislators experienced growing up in Alabama. She said she was “embarrassed” to see fellow legislators laughing at the song.
SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you like this pro-life article, please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
Alabama Citizens for Life board director Cheryl Ciamarra told LifeNews she is “grateful to the Republican majority leadership Sen. Jabo Waggoner, Senator Del Marsh and Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard for their consistent support for respect life legislation.”
“Alabama leaders are public servants who are in this for all the right reasons — they know what’s right and follow their consciences and the people of Alabama are grateful for their integrity and honesty,” she said.
Dismemberment abortion, performed on a fully-formed, living unborn baby, is a barbaric and dangerous procedure in which the unborn child is literally ripped apart in the womb and pulled out in pieces. The law embodies model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee that would ban “dismemberment abortion,” using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a living unborn baby to remove him or her from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in dilation and evacuation procedures.
Mississippi was the latest state to approve legislation that would ban dismemberment abortions when earlier this month, pro-life Governor Phil Bryant signed the bill into law.
“Dismemberment abortion kills a baby by tearing her apart limb from limb,” said National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D. “Before the first trimester ends, the unborn child has a beating heart, brain waves, and every organ system in place. Dismemberment abortions occur after the baby has reached these milestones.”
But would such an abortion ban be constitutional given the Roe v. Wade decision? The group points to the high court’s ruling in the partial-birth abortion case as grounds for banning dismemberment abortions too.
In his dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart decision, Justice Kennedy observed that in D&E dismemberment abortions, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.” Justice Kennedy added in the Court’s 2007 opinion, Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the ban on partial-birth abortion, that D&E abortions are “laden with the power to devalue human life…”
“When abortion textbooks describe in cold, explicit detail exactly how to kill a human being by ripping off arms and legs piece by piece, civilized members of society have no choice but to stand up and demand a change,” added Spaulding Balch. “When you think it can’t be uglier, the abortion industry continues to shock with violent methods of abortion.”
Supporters of the ban also point to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court Gonzales ruling, which said: “Casey [the 1992 Supreme Court decision] does not allow a doctor to choose the abortion method he or she might prefer …[and physicians] are not entitled to ignore regulations that direct them to use reasonable alternative procedures.”
NLRC’s model is the law in four states: Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Mississippi. Similar legislation has also been introduced in Pennsylvania, Minnesota , Idaho, Nebraska, Missouri, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Utah.
