West Virginia bill banning ‘dismemberment abortions’ moves ahead
The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill 24-9 that would outlaw dismemberment abortions.
Officially known as The Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act (S.B. 10) would ban abortion doctors from performing what is known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion, a gruesome process which includes extracting the unborn baby’s body parts piece by piece from the womb.
photo Peter anemoneprojects via Flickr
The bill officially states that doctors are prohibited from “causing the death of an unborn child, purposely to dismember a living unborn child and extract him or her one piece at a time from the uterus.”
The bill does, however, make an exception to babies that are already dead due to miscarriage.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow!” said West Virginians for Life on Facebook just minutes after the vote. “Now on to the House Health Committee.”
The bill, if signed into law, would not enforce any criminal charges on doctors who continue to dismember unborn children illegally, but it could make it possible for those doctors to lose their medical licenses.
“Dismemberment abortion is a barbaric practice that we wouldn’t do to a criminal,” State Senator Dave Sypolt, R-Preston, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
The bill goes next to the House of Delegates.
Dr. Anthony Levantino gave gruesome testimony to the U.S. House in 2012, in which he described the common second-trimester procedure that requires the abortionist to extract the baby’s body parts by removing them one at a time.
Lawmakers have introduced similar dismemberment abortion bans in Idaho, Missouri, Minnesota, and Nebraska, and bills are expected to be filed in Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
