I'm writing to urge your support for the Dismemberment Abortion Ban. Like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, this legislation aims to prohibit an inhumane practice that brutalizes the body of an unborn child.
This legislation would prohibit dilation and evacuation abortions, a procedure in which the abortionist first dilates the woman’s cervix and then uses steel instruments to dismember and extract the baby from the uterus. The D&E abortion procedure is usually performed between thirteen and twenty-four weeks LMP. In 2015, the Ohio Department of Health reported nearly 3,000 D&E abortions in the state of Ohio.
This legislation builds on the precedent set by the Supreme Court ten years ago in the famous case on partial-birth abortion, Gonzales v. Carhart. Like partial-birth abortion, dismemberment abortion is a brutal procedure which literally rips the child apart limb from limb. In Carhart, the Supreme Court said, "No one would dispute that, for many, D & E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life.”
Justice Kennedy, widely considered the swing vote on abortion cases, has himself described the procedure in a simple and powerful way, when he wrote: "The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from 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."
He based his writing off of the testimony of Leroy Carhart, the abortionist who challenged the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.
Based on all of the above, I firmly believe it is time Ohio passed a ban on dismemberment abortions. I respectfully and urgently ask for your support for this initiative.