Calvin Freiburger:
On Thursday, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act, which would impose a national ban on the second-trimester abortion procedure dilation and evacuation, in the Senate.
The bill, which has also been introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), specifically prohibits “knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off.”
“Surely we can all agree that dismantling a child in the womb during a late-term abortion is inhumane and is not reflective of American values,” Lankford said in support of the bill. However, abortion advocates do not agree, and have fiercely opposed many dismemberment abortion bans introduced at the state level.
Despite what the procedure entails, abortion advocates falsely claim that “dismemberment abortion” is a “medically inaccurate” name for dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortions, a procedure commonly used in the second trimester. The National Abortion Federation’s guide on dismemberment abortions actually removes the baby from the diagram, instead depicting forceps entering an empty uterus.
Nevertheless, NAF’s own instructional materials describe “grasping a fetal part,” then “withdraw[ing] the forceps while gently rotating it,” for the purpose of achieving “separation.” If that’s not clear enough, NAF also describes “fetal extremit[ies]” (i.e., limbs), “fetal trunk[s],” and “fetal skeletal development.”
Additionally, notorious late-term abortionist Warren Hern has admitted that “there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator [of D&E procedures]. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”
