January 21, 2019
House Human Services Committee
Testimony in Support of HB 1546
Madam Chair and members of the committee, my name is Linda Thorson, and I am the State Director of Concerned Women for America (CWA) of North Dakota. CWA is the largest public policy women’s organization in the nation. We heartily support HB1546 the prohibition on human dismemberment abortion.
It is doubtful anyone is eager to hear about abortion procedures; however, gruesome truth has the power to bring wisdom when deciding such matters on behalf of the citizens of our great state. Today, CWA of North Dakota is honored to speak on behalf of women and unborn children by giving testimony in support of HB1546 the human dismemberment abortion ban.
Thus far, the Supreme Court has not outlawed abortion outright; however, they have ruled that certain procedures are not to be used in the process of abortion. One favorable ruling was the upholding of the ban on partial-birth abortion which protects those most vulnerable, the unborn, by banning a particularly brutal and inhumane abortion method in which the child is removed from the womb feet-first and delivered part way before being killed.
There is yet another extremely horrific, inhumane abortion procedure that we must not allow ever to be done in North Dakota, dismemberment.
Dismemberment abortion means, with the purpose of causing the death of an unborn child, knowingly dismembering a living unborn child and extracting such unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off. [1]
This method of abortion takes place starting in the second trimester, week 13 – 27. Because North Dakota allows abortion up to only 20 weeks, let’s talk about the development of the baby up to only 20 weeks. The unborn child has a beating heart, brain waves, is startled by loud noises, has learned to breath, can suck its thumb, its eyes move, its bones are hardening, and the baby can feel pain. And, the mother has begun to feel the baby move. This procedure is cruel and barbaric.
Clearly, this procedure is inhumane on multiple levels for both the unborn and their mothers. HB 1546 will protect North Dakota children from ever experiencing this kind of painful death; it will protect the mental and emotional health of women involved in these abortions.
Concerned Women for America of North Dakota urges a “Do Pass” on HB1546.
[1] https://www.nrlc.org/uploads/stateleg/DismembermentFAQJan15.pdf