For immediate release: Friday, April 15, 2016
For more information: Tatiana Bergum, (202) 626-8825, mediarelations@nrlc.org

MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR PHIL BRYANT SIGNS
DISMEMBERMENT ABORTION BILL

WASHINGTON – Pro-life Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R) today signed into law the groundbreaking Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. The bill passed the state House of Representatives, 83-33, in February, and the state Senate, 40-6, last month. The law, which will go into effect on July 1, will prohibit dismemberment abortions in Mississippi.

“When the national debate focuses only on the mother, it is forgetting someone,” said National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D. "Banning dismemberment abortion in Mississippi has the potential to transform the debate when people realize that living unborn children are being killed by being torn limb from limb."

Mississippi becomes the fourth state to enact the groundbreaking legislation based on National Right to Life’s model bill. West Virginia enacted the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act earlier this year, with Kansas and Oklahoma passing the bill last year. The bill has also been introduced in Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, and Nebraska, and it is expected it will also be introduced in several other states.

“We applaud Mississippi Right to Life for their advocacy for this dismemberment abortion ban and we commend the Mississippi legislature for standing up for unborn children by passing this landmark bill,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “This law has the power to change how the public views the gruesome reality of abortion in the United States.”

Sponsored by Representative Sam C. Mims (R-McComb), the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act has been the top state legislative priority for National Right to Life and its affiliate, Mississippi Right to Life.

D&E dismemberment abortions are as brutal as the partial-birth abortion method, which is now illegal in the United States.

In his dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart decision, Justice Kennedy observed that in D&E dismemberment abortions, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn 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.”

Justice Kennedy added in the Court’s 2007 opinion, Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld the ban on partial-birth abortion, that D&E abortions are “laden with the power to devalue human life…”

“When abortion textbooks describe in cold, explicit detail exactly how to kill a human being by ripping off arms and legs piece by piece, civilized members of society have no choice but to stand up and demand a change,” added Spaulding Balch. “When you think it can’t be uglier, the abortion industry continues to shock with violent methods of abortion.”

A medical illustration of a D&E dismemberment abortion is available here: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/deabortiongraphic.

Background materials on the bill are available on the National Right to Life website: www.nrlc.org/statelegislation/dismemberment. Included in the background materials is the testimony of Anthony Levatino, M.D., before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in May 2013, in which he described in great detail the D&E dismemberment abortions he once performed.

National Right to Life experts, including President Carol Tobias, and Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D are available to provide further information and commentary on the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. To arrange an interview, call the NRLC Communications Department at (202) 626-8825 or email mediarelations@nrlc.org.

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.

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