Texas Abortion Clinics: We Should be Able to Dismember Unborn Babies While Their Hearts are Still Beating

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Nov 9, 2017   |   11:22AM   |   Austin, TX

A closely-watched abortion trial concluded Wednesday in Texas with the abortion industry arguing that they should be allowed to continue dismembering living, second-trimester unborn babies while their hearts still are beating.

Earlier this year, the abortion chains Whole Woman’s Health and Planned Parenthood, along with other pro-abortion groups, challenged Senate Bill 8, which prohibits dismemberment abortions, a method typically used in the second trimester to kill nearly fully-formed, living unborn babies. It is a barbaric and dangerous procedure in which the unborn baby is ripped apart in the womb and pulled out in pieces while his or her heart is still beating.

In late August, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the law until the case could go to trial. Yeakel also presided over the hearing this week.

The abortion industry’s case is based on the claim that the law will outlaw the most common second-trimester abortion procedure (dilation and evacuation or D&E) and put an undue burden on women’s access to abortion.

But, according to Texas Right to Life, their witnesses contradicted one another throughout the trial and admitted that there were alternative abortion methods that they could use to comply with the new abortion law.

At the end of the day, the abortion industry was forced to graphically describe the draconian and violent process of taking a child’s life through dismemberment, while also defending the practice they claim Texas has no right to prohibit,” the pro-life group said in a statement.

Media allies tried to paint the trial as a success for the abortion industry, though. A heavily biased report in The Austin Chronicle profiled Bhavik Kumar, medical director of the Whole Woman’s Health abortion chain in Texas, and his take on the new law.

Kumar said he has aborted about 4,000 unborn babies during his three years at the abortion chain, including dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortions, which typically involve dismembering a living, nearly fully-formed unborn baby. He claimed dismembering living unborn babies is the “safest and most common type of second-trimester abortion.”

Sanitizing the brutality of a dismemberment abortion, the report stated:

Doctors dilate the cervix and remove the fetus with surgical instruments during the typically one-day, outpatient procedure. …

Alternately, the law would allow D&E if doctors cause fetal demise first, a typically painful injection of either the drug Digoxin or potassium chloride (KCl). Those procedures are not only medically unnecessary but also add risk, pain, price, and logistical barriers, with little to no benefit, testified plaintiff physicians. And in the case of Digoxin, a woman could end up delivering the fetus outside of a health care facility.

The Federalist reports attorneys and witnesses for the abortion industry used pedantic arguments about medical terms to try to defend their cruel practices, while using euphemisms themselves to avoid drawing attention to the unborn child.

According to the report:

One expert witness for the plaintiffs, Dr. Mark Nichols of Portland, Ore., corrected a state’s attorney’s offhand use of the phrase, “unborn child.” “That’s not the term we use,” he said. “That’s not the medical term.” Sometimes, Nichols said, doctors will cause fetal demise prior to performing a second-trimester abortion to guard against “extra-mural delivery,” which is when a baby that’s supposed to be aborted is instead born alive—an event that can “cause distress” to the patient (the mother, not the unborn child). Later, he spoke of “removing parts of the pregnancy,” by which he meant ripping the limbs off a live human being. No wonder we speak of such things in euphemisms.

In his closing arguments, Darren McCarty, lead counsel for the attorney general’s office, urged the judge to consider the brutality committed against unborn babies in Texas.

“… it would be a great irony if the constitution that required the humane execution of criminals would ban the state from requiring the humane death of an unborn child,” McCarty said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued in his brief to the court that society can no longer deny that a dismemberment abortion destroys a living human being’s life in a brutal, inhumane way.

“We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction,” Paxton argued. “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”

Pro-life advocates do not expect Yeakel to rule favorably, but the state is prepared to defend the law to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

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“We welcome the lawsuit,” Texas Right To Life’s Melissa Conway said in July. “We believe the state has a right to ban this gruesome procedure. The lawsuit just moves us one step closer to overturning Roe vs. Wade.”

The legislation received strong support in the Texas legislature this year, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law in June.

The law made Texas the eighth state to protect developing preborn children from such a heinous act. Earlier this year, Arkansas also enacted its Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act joining Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

The dismemberment abortion ban embodies model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee that would prohibit “dismemberment abortion,” using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a living unborn baby to remove him or her from the womb in pieces while their heart still is beating.