By Micaiah Bilger
Life News
Texas leaders fought Monday to be allowed to ban brutal dismemberment abortions that tear unborn babies limb from limb while their hearts are beating.
Arguing in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Heather Hacker, a lawyer for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said the state protects animals and convicted criminals more than unborn babies.
“A child born at 18 weeks would…still be swaddled and cared for, but at that same age, the child in the womb could have forceps used to rip that child from the womb piece by piece,” Hacker said. “In Texas, no animal is permitted to be killed this way, nor a convicted criminal on death row treated like this.”
Signed into law in 2017, Texas Senate Bill 8 prohibits dismemberment abortions, a method typically used in the second trimester to kill nearly fully-formed, living unborn babies. It is a barbaric and dangerous procedure in which the unborn baby is ripped apart in the womb and pulled out in pieces while his or her heart is still beating.
The abortion chain Whole Women’s Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the law, and a judge struck it down in November. The state appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
On Monday, a panel of judges spent about an hour considering the arguments of the state and abortion activists, according to the Texas Tribune.
Here’s more from the report:
“It’s illegal to kill an animal that way in Texas, we wouldn’t execute a murderer that way, and notably the abortion providers don’t tell women that that’s what the procedure entails,” Hacker said.
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Judge Lee Yeakel
By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life
U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel of the Western District of Texas heard a challenge today from abortion providers represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights who argued that the state’s ban on dismemberment abortions be put on hold until a full hearing can occur.
The Dismemberment Abortion Ban section of the Senate Bill 8– passed by the Texas Legislature in the 85th Regular Session last May–is scheduled to go into effect this Friday. According to Texas Right to Life, “Judge Yeakel is expected to release an order on the preliminary injunction later this week.”
Texas joined seven other states– Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana–in forbidding an abortion “technique” that uses sharp metal clamps and scissors to crush, tear and pulverize living unborn human beings, to rip heads and legs off of tiny torsos until the defenseless child bleeds to death.
“Just like partial-birth abortions, dismemberment abortions are inhumane and gruesome acts of violence against the preborn child,” Texas Right to Life wrote today. “Passing these types of bills educates elected officials and the public on the horrific truth about the injustice and violence of abortion.”
Writing prior to the hearing, Chuck Lindell of the American-Statesman reported
Lawyers for Attorney General Ken Paxton will ask U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel to let the law take effect, as scheduled, on Friday, arguing that the state has a legitimate interest in outlawing a “brutal, gruesome and inhumane practice.”
They also say the abortion providers that sued, including Whole Woman’s Health and Planned Parenthood, are not entitled to emergency relief because they waited six weeks before filing the suit on July 20, leading to a rushed appearance before the judge days before the law takes effect.
