An Indiana Senate committee moved forward Wednesday with legislation to protect unborn babies from brutal dismemberment abortions.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-3 to send House Bill 1211 to the full state Senate, the AP reports. The state House approved it in February.
“We are just taking a practice that is barbaric and saying unless it’s for the health of the mother, we should find an alternative,” said state Sen. Aaron Freeman, the Journal Gazette reports.
The bill would allow abortionists to be charged with a felony if they abort an unborn baby by tearing the baby limb from limb while their heart is beating. These types of abortion procedures are common in the second trimester when unborn babies are nearly fully formed.
Here’s more from the report:
Dr. Andrew Mullally of Fort Wayne said he has never heard of a legitimate medical reason to do the procedure. And he said Hoosiers would be outraged if something similar was done on animals.
“It’s never medically necessary,” he said.
Dr. Christina Francis, a Fort Wayne obstetrician-gynecologist, said the majority of the procedures done now are on healthy moms and relate to socioeconomic reasons or a fetal diagnosis of a disease or anomaly, such as Down syndrome.
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The Statehouse File reports the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue Indiana if the bill passes.
“If this bill passes, we will sue. We will sue,” said Katie Blair, of the state ACLU chapter.
However, Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher promised to defend the law against any legal challenges, according to the report.
“Like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, this legislation aims to prohibit an inhumane practice that brutalizes the body of an unborn child,” according to Indiana Right to Life.
“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 13 and 24 weeks LMP. Sadly, these are happening in Indiana,” the group continued.
Several other states already have passed laws to protect unborn babies from being ripped apart in their mothers’ wombs. Alabama and Kentucky are in legal battles with the abortion industry to defend their laws.
By 11 weeks, unborn babies already have fingers and toes, heartbeats and detectable brain waves. They can respond to touch, yawn, suck their thumbs and even show signs of being right or left handed.
The Dismemberment Abortion Ban is built in part on the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), which upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban and scaled back the scope of Roe v. Wade. In its opinion, former Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on abortion, described what occurs in a D&E abortion: “[F]riction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus… No one would dispute that for many, D&E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life.”
