{"id":193593,"date":"2019-01-03T11:35:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T17:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=193593"},"modified":"2019-01-05T13:16:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T19:16:31","slug":"alabama-supreme-court-uphold-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/alabama-supreme-court-uphold-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama asks Supreme Court to uphold ban on ‘gruesome’ abortions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to hear a case which challenges whether Alabama\u2019s law banning dismemberment abortions<\/a> is constitutional.<\/p>\n

The State of Alabama announced that Marshall had filed a petition against the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals\u2019 ruling last August regarding the state’s 2016 law that bans dismemberment abortions, noting that the state has what it deems as “more humane” second trimester abortion methods for the seven percent of women who undergo second trimester abortions, thus, making dismemberment abortions unnecessary. The state announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe constitutionality of a state ban on dismemberment abortion is an important question of national significance,\u201d Marshall wrote in the petition. \u201cAt least nine states have enacted laws to ban dismemberment abortion. Litigation over some of these similar abortion laws is pending in the Fifth Circuit, the Eighth Circuit and multiple state courts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In a dismemberment abortion, a doctor dismembers a living unborn child and extracts him or her one piece at a time from the uterus using clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, or scissors. Attorney General Marshall argued that Alabama\u2019s law is similar to the federal ban on partial-birth abortions which was enacted in 2003 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c… Federal law constitutionally prohibits partial-birth abortions. And there is no \u2018meaningful difference\u2019 between death-by-dismemberment abortion in the womb and partial-birth abortion outside it. As the court of appeals expressly recognized, only this Court can resolve the inconsistency in treatment between partial-birth and dismemberment abortion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Dismemberment abortions are also called D&E, or dilation and evacuation, abortions. Usually committed in the second trimester, when the preborn child can almost certainly feel pain, this is a particularly violent abortion procedure which takes several days to complete, and during which a preborn child is ripped apart limb from limb.<\/p>\n