Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a bill into law on Tuesday that prohibits “dismemberment abortions,” which is said to be the safest way to perform a second trimester abortion.
The law, the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act,” describes a dismemberment abortion: “with the purpose of causing the death of an unborn child, to purposely dismember a living unborn child and extract him or her one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or a similar instrument that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slices, crushes, or grasps a portion of the unborn child’s body to cut or rip it off or apart.”
The medical procedure is officially known as dilation and evacuation, or “D&E.”
“No civil society should allow its unborn children to be ripped apart,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R), the sponsor of the law, said. “Incredible as it seems, we needed a law to say that. We have it now.”
The policy has been widely supported by conservative Republicans who view abortion as a brutal attack against the unborn.
Though there has been no proven relation to the law, a video addressing second trimester abortions recently went viral. The video, released as a part of Live Action’s website, AbortionProcedures.com, features Dr. Anthony Levatino, a doctor who used to perform abortions, describing how a dismemberment abortion is performed. It has received criticism from pro-choice advocates for being too “graphic” and utilizing the “ick factor” to influence viewers, many of whom have questioned their pro-choice convictions after watching unborn babies being torn “limb from limb,” as the video describes.
Prohibiting D&E abortions has become a state trend. Last year, Kansas and Oklahoma were the first states to ban the procedure. Alabama and West Virginia followed suit this year, and several other states have pending legislation concerning D&E abortions.
The new limits imposed upon abortion procedures are a concern for doctors. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote a legal brief in response to the Kansas bill, stating that the law is “a medically unnecessary intrusion into the examination room” that “threatens patient safety.”
Elizabeth Nash, the state’s issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told ThinkProgress that “clearly this is an effort to take some of the tactics of the past … to ban access to abortion.”
Clearly – as that has been the conservative aim since Roe v. Wade. Those laws are just the beginning of an attempt to ensure safety — not only guarding women from this harmful procedure, but also for those who do not yet have a voice.
The bill takes effect on August 1.
