In April, Kansas became the first state in the nation to enact a Dismemberment Abortion Ban. The legislation (SB 95, or the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act) curtails the commission of a gruesome and inhumane common abortion procedure, and carried strong support in the Kansas legislature before being signed into law by Pro-Life Governor Sam Brownback. Now, abortionists have appealed the law on the grounds that the Act poses an “undue burden” to abortion access, claiming that the law infringes on the notion of a so-called “constitutional right” to elective abortion.
Kansas’ Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Act describes the dismemberment process in gut-wrenching detail (emphasis added):
“Dismemberment abortion” means, with the purpose of causing the death of an unborn child, 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.
This description aligns with the testimony of former late-term abortionist Anthony Levatino.
The law is supported overwhelmingly by public opinion, as the vast majority of Americans oppose late-term abortions. Such abortions are also never medically necessary. Furthermore, contrary to fear-mongering and manipulative rhetoric by abortion activists, dismemberment abortions are primarily undergone by healthy women carrying healthy babies. In fact, while the abortion lobby strongly implies that only desperate parents of hopelessly incapacitated, “wanted” children undergo dismemberment abortions, the Pro-Choice Action League reported that the majority of Kansas abortionist George Tiller’s late-term patients were teenagers who were in denial about their pregnancies and did not seek abortions until the pregnancy was significantly progressed.
Despite the utter dearth of need for dismemberment abortions and the opposition of Kansans to the brutal procedure, abortionists across the state are seeking to overturn the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. This is no surprise given the financial motive that we know drives the abortion industry. The ban has, undoubtedly, created a financial drought for the abortionists, as each dismemberment procedure can rake in as much as $10,000 or more.
In this case, the attorneys for the abortion industry have once again wielded the extraordinarily vague “undue burden” argument against the Pro-Life law. The notion of undue burden, which Texas Right to Life has previously explored, has engendered a gamut of judicial interpretations over the last two decades and is one of the few weak weapons remaining in the anti-Life arsenal. The Supreme Court of the United States is likely to clarify their interpretation of this term in 2016 when they issue a ruling on Texas’ House Bill 2, the Pro-Life Omnibus Bill of the 2013 Legislative Session. Meanwhile, what the Kansas appellate court will decide is anyone’s guess. So far, the panel has convened one 90-minute hearing, which took place last Thursday.
Since Kansas blazed the Dismemberment Abortion Ban trail, Oklahoma has followed suit. When the Center for Medical Progress began releasing harrowing footage of the carnage that results from the inhuman dismemberment procedure, Nebraska took action to follow suit with their own Ban. Texas Right to Life is working with Pro-Life leaders and elected officials to ensure that Texas, likewise, will soon do the same.