The Ohio House of Representatives passed a landmark bill Thursday that if signed into law would ban all abortions after the unborn baby’s heartbeat is detected.
But if the legislature is unable to override an expected veto of the heartbeat bill by Gov. John Kasich, then there’s another bill waiting in the state Senate that the pro-life community believes will become all the more urgent.
Senate Bill 145, also called the “dismemberment bill,” is sponsored by Sen. Matt Huffman (R-Lima) and Sen. Steve Wilson (R-Maineville).
It would criminalize a procedure called “dismemberment abortion” or, as it’s called in the medical community, “dilation and evacuation abortions.”
This type of abortion is usually performed in the second trimester, between 13 and 24 weeks, while a heartbeat is usually detectable within six to eight weeks.
During this procedure, the abortionist first dilates the woman’s cervix and then uses a steel instrument to dismember and extract the baby from the womb.
In 2015, the Ohio Department of Health reported nearly 3,000 dilation and evacuation abortions in the state of Ohio, according to Ohio Right to Life.
“Like partial-birth abortion, dismemberment abortion is a brutal procedure which literally rips the child limb from limb,” the group states on its website.
Dr. Anthony Levatino, an obstetrician-gynecologist and former abortionist, describes the procedure in the video below:
In Gonzales v. Carhart, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “no one would dispute that, for many, D&E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life.”
“The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from 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,” the recently retired Kennedy wrote.
Seven states have passed dismemberment abortion bans,but if the heartbeat bill were to become law, there would be no need for a dismemberment law.
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Anthony Accardi is a writer and reporter for The Ohio Star.
