by Andrew Bair | LifeNews.com | 3/19/15 2:42 PM

A recent article published by the Washington Examiner focused on the remarkable pro-life progress being made on the state level.

The article quoted Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D., director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, who said, “In terms of the numbers, we’ve had a pretty good run of it these last few years, and this year we will pass substantive legislation as well.”

However, the article missed the mark regarding groundbreaking legislation making its way through the Kansas and Oklahoma legislatures.

The article noted, “The Kansas and Oklahoma Houses have approved legislation banning abortions performed through a method called ‘dilation and extraction,’ in which a fetus is partially removed from a woman’s uterus.”

The legislation has not yet passed the full Kansas House. The measure passed the full Senate. It has passed a House committee.

The bill is not a ban on the “dilation and extraction” (D&X) technique. That is commonly referred to as partial-birth abortion and unborn children are already protected from that horrific method of abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on partial-birth abortion in the landmark Gonzales v. Carhart case in 2007.

Instead, the bill would end dismemberment abortions, a particularly brutal form of “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) abortions.

The Examiner article displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of what takes place during a dismemberment abortion. In no abortion are unborn babies only “partially removed.”

The entire body of the unborn child must be removed in every abortion regardless of method. Otherwise, the mother would be even more susceptible to infection and severe complications.

A dismemberment abortion, as described in the bill, ends the life of an unborn baby by grasping, pulling and twisting off her tiny limbs from her body using sharp metal instruments. This method is used to abort unborn children as old as 24 weeks, or even later. By this time, the baby’s skull has often hardened to bone and the skull must be compressed or crushed to facilitate removal.

Perhaps what the reporter meant to say is that the unborn baby’s parts are removed limb by limb, piece by piece.

Abortionist LeRoy Carhart described dismemberment abortions in this way while testifying under oath in 2000, “My normal course would be to dismember that appendage and then go back and try to take the fetus out whether foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first….Just pulling and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get hold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus …”

The further question was asked, “In that situation, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive?” Carhart answered, “‘Yes.’ …I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.”

The passage of legislation to protect unborn babies from dismemberment abortions is a top priority of National Right to Life in 2015.  In addition to saving lives, the bill serves an educational purpose by shining light on the inherent brutality of abortion. Bringing the violent reality of abortion before the public has the power to change hearts and minds in a similar fashion to the successful push to ban partial-birth abortions.