West Virginia could become the third state to ban a common procedure used for second-trimester abortions.
State lawmakers are lining up to support legislation (SB 10/HB 4004) that would ban so-called “dismemberment abortions.”
Republican legislators have modeled their bill after similar bans in Oklahoma and Kansas, but the laws in those states are being held up by court challenges.
The bill’s supporters say they want to stop a “barbaric” abortion practice spotlighted in a series of undercover videos that targeted Planned Parenthood last year. The videos sparked outrage among anti-abortion activists, and Planned Parenthood sued the makers of the video last week.
“Dismemberment abortion is a barbaric practice that we wouldn’t do to a criminal,” said Sen. Dave Sypolt, R-Preston, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate.
Abortion rights advocates counter that the legislation would put women’s lives in danger, forcing them to undergo riskier procedures or forgo abortions.
“Unfortunately, politicians in West Virgina seem bent on not only taking us back in time, but putting us at the forefront of an extreme national agenda,” said Margaret Chapman Pomponio, executive director of West Virginia Free. “West Virginia should not be a testing ground for dangerous and extreme legislation that sacrifices women’s health.”
The National Right to Life Committee is urging states to adopt what it calls “model legislation” to prohibit the dilation and evacuation abortion procedure commonly used for women who are more than 12 weeks pregnant. Exceptions could be made to prevent death or extreme physical harm to women.
The anti-abortion group West Virginians for Life has named the abortion-restriction bill as their top priority for the 60-day legislative session that got underway last week.
“We need to eliminate this practice that could lead to the sale of baby parts wherever that may occur,” said Wanda Franz, president of the group. “Passing this law would prevent abortionists from doing the type of abortion that allows them to harvest baby parts as described in the undercover videos.”
The legislation bans doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces.
Doctors use the dilation and evacuation procedure in about 95 percent of second-trimester abortions nationally. Lawyers for abortion rights groups in Kansas and Oklahoma have argued that previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings don’t allow states to ban the most common technique for terminating a pregnancy.
Judges in Oklahoma and Kansas have blocked bans from taking effect in those states.
“Voters want a legislature that is focused on improving education, increasing access to health care and jobs,” Chapman Pomponio said. “This bill does the opposite: It aims to take away health care and imprison our doctors.”
Lawyers for anti-abortion groups have argued that doctors could avoid violating the ban by giving the fetus a lethal injection or by severing its umbilical cord before performing an abortion. The legislation doesn’t apply to a fetus that dies before instruments are used to remove it from the womb.
The West Virginia bill outlaws “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.”
Eleven GOP House of Delegates members and 11 state senators are sponsoring the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.”
“This is a commonsense follow-up to what we’ve seen in our country with Planned Parenthood this past year,” said Delegate Lynne Arvon, R-Raleigh.
Last week, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress, the group that released the undercover videos, which purport to show Planned Parenthood executives discussing the illegal sale of baby parts. The lawsuit alleges that the videos were illegally recorded and deceptively edited — and part of a “smear campaign” against Planned Parenthood.
Last year, a law prohibiting abortions 20 weeks after conception took effect in West Virginia, even though Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed the ban over concerns that a court would strike it down. The Republican-controlled Legislature overrode the governor’s veto in March. The 20-week abortion ban is based on the disputed theory that a fetus can feel pain at that point. Eleven states have some version of the 20-week ban.
Reach Eric Eyre at ericeyre@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4869 or follow @ericeyre on Twitter.