The Dallas Observer’s article on the priority Pro-Life bill of the 85th Session of the Texas Legislature reveals a lot about the abortion lobby. Specifically, the article demonstrates what the anti-Life movement fears most in a Pro-Life state like Texas. Ultimately, what abortion activists fear most is not the Pro-Life advocates and elected officials, but the preborn child.
In his article titled Inside the Legal Strategy Behind Texas’ Newly Filed Anti-Abortion Bill, Stephen Young paints a bleak picture for Big Abortion in Texas. The Dismemberment Abortion Ban was filed as Texas Right to Life’s top legislative priority in 2017. In Young’s telling, the Pro-Life legislation is a crafty way to thwart women seeking elective abortions in Texas.
Understandably, the anti-Life lobby would be concerned that a barbaric abortion method used to kill thousands of preborn Texans each year may soon be outlawed. Not only are dismemberment abortions gruesome, they are also profitable. Additionally, with the shocking release of undercover videos, Texas learned that Planned Parenthood affiliates in our state profited from the inhumane sale of body parts harvested from aborted babies. The Dismemberment Abortion Ban will ensure that abortion businesses can no longer selectively harvest body parts for the highest bidder, further exploiting the tiny lives ended.
The reason for the Dismemberment Abortion Ban, however, is not to financially cripple the abortion industry or to make the lives of women more difficult. The reason is to protect the preborn. We are concerned with defending children in the womb from a violent death and from a horrific procedure that is never needed to save the life of the mother. We strongly support the expansion of life-affirming programs that give women real options.
In the Dallas Observer piece, Young does acknowledge that the Dismemberment Abortion Ban ultimately paves the legal path to challenge Roe v. Wade. His emphasis, however, remains firmly on the side of the abortion lobby. Young cannot acknowledge the child.
Apparently in an attempt at intellectual honesty, Young offers a description of dismemberment abortion. He states:
D&E is used by abortion providers when aspiration, which is the most common abortion procedure in the first trimester, is no longer a viable method. Fetal tissue is dissected in the uterus and then removed in pieces, hence the dismemberment label.
Filling in the gaps in Young’s clinical-sounding description, you can well imagine how dismemberment abortion is deemed “gruesome and inhumane.” The reason aspiration “is no longer a viable method” of killing the preborn baby in some elective abortions is that the child has grown too large to be sucked from her mother’s uterus with a high-powered vacuum. The “fetal tissue” is “dissected” because that fetal tissue forms a child with a beating heart, brainwaves, fingers, and toes. Dissecting the “fetal tissue” is dismemberment because a fully-formed child is torn limb from limb until he succumbs to death.
The reason why the legal strategy behind the Dismemberment Abortion Ban will work is that the abortion lobby is forced to talk about the preborn child. No matter how many different names they try to use (“fetus,” “POC” (products of conception), “meat in a slow cooker”), the reality is that they are talking about someone: a child.
Texas Right to Life’s Legislative Director John Seago summarized the priority legislation:
The Dismemberment Abortion Ban challenges the legal foundation of Roe, reveals to the culture the humanity of the preborn and inhumanity of abortion, and will spare thousands of children from this gruesome practice.
The abortion lobby is right to be afraid.