Status:
Introduced in the Ohio Senate – May 4, 2017
Sponsor Testimony – June 13, 2017
Proponent Testimony – June 20, 2017
Opponent Testimony – June 27, 2017
Passed out of committee – June 27, 2017
Passed out of the Senate – June 28, 2017
Introduced in the Ohio House – June 29, 2017
Sponsor Testimony – November 15, 2017
Proponent Testimony – January 16, 2018
Opponent Testimony – February 13, 2018
All Testimony – March 13, 2018
Passed out of committee – December 11, 2018
Passed out of the House – December 13, 2018
Senate Concurred with House Amendments – December 13, 2018
Bill signed into law by Gov. Kasich – December 21, 2018
The legislation would prohibit dilation and evacuation abortions, a procedure in which the abortionist first dilates the woman’s cervix and then uses steel instruments to dismember and extract the baby from the uterus. The D&E abortion procedure is usually performed between thirteen and twenty-four weeks LMP. In 2017, the Ohio Department of Health reported nearly 3,500 D&E abortions in the state of Ohio.
Like partial-birth abortion, dismemberment abortion is a brutal procedure which literally rips the child limb from limb. In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court said, “No one would dispute that, for many, D & E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life.”
Justice Kennedy, widely considered the swing vote on abortion cases, has himself described the procedure in a simple and powerful way, when he wrote: “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.”
Seven other states have passed dismemberment abortion bans, with more working on them in 2017.
