On Wednesday, while most of the country was focused on the second Republican presidential debate, and the candidates’ positions on the ongoing controversy swirling around Planned Parenthood, GOP lawmakers quietly made moves toward advancing one of their next major attacks on abortion rights: Cracking down on “fetal dismemberment.”
For weeks, the political conversation about reproductive rights has centered on Planned Parenthood, as a multi-part video campaign has accused the group of improperly profiting from the sale of aborted fetal tissue. Even though there’s no evidence that Planned Parenthood actually broke any laws, anti-abortion lawmakers say the national women’s health organization should be stripped of its taxpayer funding — setting the stage for a potential government shutdown.
Though this fight was on full display during CNN’s presidential debate — during which Carly Fiorina made a passionate speech arguing that defunding Planned Parenthood is “about the character of our nation” — there’s a different kind of battle brewing in Congress.
One of the most anti-abortion members of Congress, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, officially introduced a bill on Wednesday seeking to “prohibit dismemberment abortions.” While that bill won’t necessarily go anywhere while Democrats maintain control of the White House, its introduction represents the next step in a larger effort to outlaw a specific medical procedure, enshrine junk science into law, and potentially provoke a Supreme Court challenge.
This past legislative session, abortion opponents made it clear that they’re laying the groundwork for this particular attack on abortion. As state-level abortion restrictions continue to be pushed to new extremes, Kansas and Oklahoma became the first states in the nation to ban so-called “fetal dismemberment” — an inflammatory term for the medical procedure officially known as Dilation and Evacuation, or “D&E.;”
D&E;, which is the most common way to perform a surgical abortion after the first trimester, is endorsed by researchers from the World Health Organization as the gold standard for later abortions. Nonetheless, as GOP lawmakers increasingly attempt to indirectly cut off access to abortion by banning specific elements of the procedure, it’s become caught in the crossfire. By casting D&E; as “dismemberment,” abortion opponents ultimately have the same goal in mind as the pro-life activists currently targeting Planned Parenthood: Convince the American public that abortion is barbaric by construing the process as ripping babies limb from limb.
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the right-wing group that’s pushing “dismemberment” bans, has had a lot of previous success with this particular strategy.
In the 1990s, NRLC spearheaded a similar push to ban a different type of second-trimester abortion called Intact Dilation & Extraction, or “D&X;” — first by passing state-level bans, then by getting a national ban through Congress, then by getting the policy upheld by the Supreme Court. The organization framed D&X; as “partial-birth abortion,” which — just like “dismemberment” — is strategically crafted to evoke images of babies being crushed, but is not a real medical term. The organization distributed graphic visuals depicting fetuses being ripped apart.
Reproductive rights experts say that the current push to ban D&E; appears to be directly piggybacking on the pro-life community’s successful efforts to pass a national abortion ban back in 2003, when “partial-birth abortion” was officially outlawed.
“Clearly this is an effort to take some of the tactics of the past — using very graphic descriptions and inflammatory language — to ban access to abortion,” Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told ThinkProgress when Kansas first started advancing its measure. “I don’t know what will happen, but it’s very disturbing.”
This week, the NRLC celebrated Smith’s new bill, acknowledging that it’s “based on a model state bill proposed by National Right to Life, which has already been enacted this year in Kansas and Oklahoma.” The statement also makes specific reference to the organization’s earlier push to ban D&X;, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow “partial-birth abortion” bans to stand as legal justification for going ahead and banning D&E; as well.
Medical professionals who provide abortions are deeply concerned about this emerging attack, which could force them to stop offering second-trimester pregnancy terminations altogether. In Kansas, a father-daughter team of certified OB-GYNs quickly moved to sue the state over its new “dismemberment” ban, arguing it infringes on patients’ right to bodily integrity by prohibiting their doctors from offering them the safest abortion care.
Now, the introduction of national “dismemberment” legislation — without even waiting for the policy to gain more momentum on the state level over the next several years — signals that abortion opponents are prepared to forge ahead.
Over the past several years, anti-abortion lawmakers have made historic gains by enacting a flurry of complicated laws that restrict women’s access to the procedure in brand new ways. They’re showing no signs of slowing down. And, depending who lands in the White House after the 2016 election, they may be better positioned than ever to accomplish their goals.