Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
By a vote of 98 -26, the Kansas House on March 25 passed landmark pro-life legislation, Senate Bill 95,”The Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.”
Kansans For Life Executive Director Mary Kay Culp thanked legislators for their diligence in tackling the issue and enacting a Constitutionally sound law that will stop a horrific procedure.
After the introduction of the bill in January by lead sponsor Sen. Garrett Love (R-Montezuma) and 24 Senate co-sponsors, the bill generated immediate grass-roots support and passed the Kansas Senate, 31-9. SB 95 now heads to Gov. Sam Brownback, who has promised his signature.
SB 95 bans a particularly gruesome abortion method in which a living unborn child in her mother’s womb is ripped apart by an abortionist using sharp metal tools. In the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the unborn child “dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb.” (Stenberg v. Carhart)
Model language for SB 95 was provided by the National Right to Life Committee, which made this bill its top state legislative priority.
SB 95 was carried on the House floor by seasoned pro-lifer Rep. Steve Brunk (R-Wichita), chair of the Federal & State Affairs committee which held the hearing on the measure. He was assisted on legal questions by another pro-life leader, Rep. John Rubin (R-Shawnee), chair of the Corrections & Juvenile Justice committee.
Pro-life Rep. Becky Hutchins (R-Holton) spoke up for the victim of dismemberment abortion, the “living” unborn child. Then she talked about the “three D’s” associated with such abortions, (depravity, devaluation, and desensitization) as admitted by former abortionist George Flesh:
“Tearing a developed fetus apart, limb by limb, is an act of depravity that society should not permit. We cannot afford such a devaluation of human life, nor the desensitization of medical personnel it requires.”
In the 42 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down, the Supreme Court has consistently asserted that States have compelling interests in regulating abortion to preserve the integrity of the medical profession and show respect for the unborn child.
“States also have an interest in forbidding medical procedures which, in the State’s reasonable determination, might cause the medical profession or society as a whole to become insensitive, even disdainful, to life, including life in the human fetus.” (Stenberg v. Carhart)
Although the Court (in the 2000 Stenberg v Carhart ruling) did not uphold Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortions, in 2007 it did uphold the federal ban on partial-birth abortions in Gonzales v. Carhart. In both Stenberg and Gonzales, the justices closely examined the gruesome methods of both partial-birth and D&E/ dismemberment abortions.
“Those who oppose abortion would agree, indeed would insist, that both procedures [partial-birth and D&E] are subject to the most severe moral condemnation, condemnation reserved for the most repulsive human conduct.” (Stenberg v. Carhart)
In Stenberg, Justice John Paul Stevens, an abortion supporter, comparing partial-birth abortion to dismemberment abortion in 2000 wrote, “that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one but not the other, is simply irrational.” (Stenberg v. Carhart)
Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, also an abortion supporter, said in Gonzales that both methods “could equally be characterized as ‘brutal, ‘involving as it does ‘tear[ing] [a fetus] apart’ and ‘rip[ping] off’ its limbs.” (Stenberg v. Carhart)
The simple truth is D&E dismemberment abortions are as brutal as the partial-birth abortion method, which is now illegal in the United States.
KFL senior lobbyist Jeanne Gawdun congratulates Reps. Brunk, Hutchins & Rubin after SB 95 passage
By Kathy Ostrowski
