WASHINGTON – By overwhelming margins, both chambers of the West Virginia Legislature today gave final approval to the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act (S.B. 10/H.B. 4004). The House of Delegates voted 86-13; the state Senate approved the measure 24-9. The groundbreaking legislation will prohibit the use of brutal dismemberment abortions in the state.
“When the national debate focuses only on the mother, it is forgetting someone,” said National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D. “The groundbreaking passage in West Virginia of the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act has the potential to transform the debate when people realize that living unborn children are being killed by being torn limb from limb.”
Sponsored by state Sen. Dave Sypolt (R-Preston, 14) and Del. Lynne Arvon (R-Raleigh, 31), the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act has been the top state legislative priority for National Right to Life and its affiliate, West Virginians for Life (WVFL). WVFL Legislative Coordinator Karen Cross observed, “As I meet with West Virginia legislators, I am encouraged by their overwhelming opposition to dismemberment abortions which are performed on fully-formed, living unborn children. West Virginians are pro-life and it is reflected in their representatives. Like their constituents, most of West Virginia legislators are appalled that anyone would dismember a living, fully formed unborn baby.”
“We applaud the efforts of our affiliate, West Virginians for Life, for shepherding this vital and necessary bill thru the legislature,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “Because of the West Virginia legislature’s strong pro-life convictions, unborn children in the state will be protected from brutal dismemberment abortions.”
D&E dismemberment abortions are as brutal as the partial-birth abortion method, which is now illegal in the United States.
In his dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart decision, Justice Kennedy observed that in D&E dismemberment abortions, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”
Justice Kennedy added in the Court’s 2007 opinion, Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the ban on partial-birth abortion, that D&E abortions are “laden with the power to devalue human life…”
“When abortion textbooks describe in cold, explicit detail exactly how to kill a human being by ripping off arms and legs piece by piece, civilized members of society have no choice but to stand up and demand a change,” added Spaulding Balch. “When you think it can’t be uglier, the abortion industry continues to shock with violent methods of abortion.”
A medical illustration of a D&E dismemberment abortion is available here: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/deabortiongraphic.
Background materials on the bill are available on the National Right to Life website: www.nrlc.org/statelegislation/dismemberment. Included in the background materials is the testimony of Anthony Levatino, M.D., before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in May 2013, in which he described in great detail the D&E dismemberment abortions he once performed.
National Right to Life experts, including President Carol Tobias, and Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D are available to provide further information and commentary on the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. To arrange an interview, call the NRLC Communications Department at (202) 626-8825 or email mediarelations@nrlc.org.
Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.
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