TALLAHASSEE, Florida, March 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Florida House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to ban dismemberment abortions.
HB-1429 won on mostly party lines (72-42), with two Democrats voting yes and five Republicans voting against it.
The bill, sponsored by pro-life Rep. Eric Grall, specifically prohibits “the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or a similar instrument” that “slices, crushes, or grasps… a piece of the fetus’ body to cut or rip the piece from the body.”
The bill does not ban suction abortions by which preborn children are killed “by sucking pieces of the fetus into a collection 25 container.”
The Dismemberment Ban also bans late and second-trimester abortions. Its only exception is to save the life of the mother.
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Violating the ban would be a third-degree felony for the abortionist. Mothers would face no penalty.
HB-1429 now heads to the state Senate, where it will face considerable opposition. If the Senate passes it and it’s signed into law, the ban would go into effect July first.
Republicans who voted against the dismemberment ban were: Halsey Beshears, Tom Goodson, Bill Hager, Rene Plasencia, and Holly Raschein. Democrats who voted for the ban were Kimberly Daniels and Barry Russell.
The dismemberment abortion procedure, called Dilation and Evacuation (D&E), is the most common method of abortion in the second trimester.
Last year the state of Florida reported 4,439 late term abortions, the vast majority being dismemberment abortions of second-trimester babies. In 2016 the state reported 5,192. Nationally, approximately ten percent of abortions are committed against babies in their second-trimester of gestation.
“These are babies who are alive and healthy,” Dr. Joe Pojman of Texas Alliance for Life stated. “A doctor kills (the) child by tearing him or her into pieces.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that D&E abortions are “laden with the power to devalue human life.”
“Before the first trimester ends, the unborn child has a beating heart, brain waves, and every organ system in place,” National Right to Life’s Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D. explains. “Dismemberment abortion then kills a baby by tearing her apart limb from limb.”
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino described D&E abortions: “Picture yourself reaching in with the clamp and grasping anything you can… Squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard – really hard. You feel something let go, and out pops a fully formed leg, about 4 to 5 inches long.”
Dr. Levatino continues, “Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the (clamp) and pull really hard once again, and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp, and tear out the spine, intestines, heart, and lungs.”
But the gruesome abortion is not over. “The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a plum and is now free-floating inside the uterine cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see a pure white gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the baby’s brains.”
“You can then extract the skull pieces. If you have a really bad day like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.”
Mary Kay Culp, Executive Director of Kansans for Life told LifeSiteNews that abortionists have ulterior motives to fight dismemberment bans.
“Dismemberment abortion facilitates fetal harvesting,” Culp said. “Clinicians experimenting on aborted baby parts don’t want their research tainted by drugs, and, they want fresh organs –packed for shipping within minutes of death,” she explained.
“Dismemberment is also a lot quicker, so you can make money faster,” Culp said.
Dismemberment abortion bans have been signed in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia. All but Mississippi and West Virginia are being challenged in the courts. Attempts have been made in other states to ban D&E, such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Pojman opines that liberal judges striking down dismemberment bans just shows how “out of touch” they are “with modern science, which clearly tells us that an unborn child is living human being.”