Mississippi and West Virginia file bills to ban common abortion procedure

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Mississippi and West Virginia file bills to ban common abortion procedure

Associated Press in Jackson, Mississippi
Thursday 11 February 2016 20.57 GMT

Opponents of abortion in Mississippi, West Virginia and several other states are filing bills to ban a procedure commonly used in the second trimester that opponents describe as dismembering a fetus. Courts have blocked similar laws enacted by Kansas and Oklahoma in 2015.

The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers in legal fights, says banning the dilation and evacuation method of abortion – commonly called “D&E” – is unconstitutional because it interferes with private medical decisions.

“Laws like these are an attack on women’s health, personal autonomy, and the doctor-patient relationship, and they have the potential to force physicians to subject women seeking safe and legal abortion services in the second trimester to additional invasive and unnecessary procedures,” Kelly Baden, the center’s director of state advocacy, said in a letter this week to West Virginia lawmakers.

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The Mississippi bill uses language provided by the Washington-based National Right to Life Committee. It would prohibit any abortion that would involve extracting a live fetus in pieces from the uterus using instruments like clamps and forceps, calling that procedure a “dismemberment abortion”.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/11/mississippi-west-virginia-bills-ban-abortion-dilation-and-evacuation

[COLGATE4]

1. It's the same incrementalist bullshit that got us stuck

with the absolutely non-medical term "partial birth abortion", designed to appeal to the emotions of the anti-choice mouth breathers who can't get past their obsession with the idea that a woman (and her doctor) are in no position to make a decision regarding the termination of a pregnancy. And the worst part is that craven politicians - of BOTH parties - will look sage and declare that, while they are resolutely in favor of a woman's right to choose, this measure is a 'resonable accomodation' with the Right to Lifers. And women lose another commonly used abortion procedure. Between this type of sneaky legislation and the success the TRAP laws have had all over the country I would not be at all surprised to see legal abortion become virtually impossible to obtain (except for people of significant financial resources) in the U.S. in another fifteen years.

Then, we can go about outlawing contraception!