Kansas is the first state to ban the abortion process where they dismember babies during their removal.
Govenror Sam Brownback signed the SB95 law Tuesday banning dilation and evacuation abortions. The Senate approved the bill 31-9 while the House passed the law 98-26.
The law says it will now be illegal to “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.”
The process, which is common in second trimester abortions, stops the child’s heart and then the child is removed from the uterus in pieces.
Pro-abortion groups like Trust Women and Planned Parenthood said they’re considering lawsuits to block the law.
Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina are considering similar legislation.
Pro-Abortionists are celebrating a judge’s ruling striking down a law in Wisconsin that would have helped protect the health and welfare of women.
U.S. District Judge William Conley, struck down Senate Bill 206, which calls for increased health standards at abortion facilities. The bill also requires anyone who wants an abortion to have admitting privileges at a local hospital to help women who suffer injury or complications from the process.
The lawsuit was brought by Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
“While the court agrees with the State that sometimes it is necessary to reduce access to ensure safety, this is decidedly not one of those instances,” Conley wrote. “In particular, the state has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating through credible evidence a link between the admitting privileges requirement and a legitimate health interest.”
“The only reasonable conclusion is that the legislation was motivated by an improper purpose, namely to restrict the availability of abortion services in Wisconsin,” Conley said.
A spokeswoman for Governor Scott Walker said the state will appeal the decision.
The Mississippi legislature has passed the “Jesus Take The Wheel Act” which would allow drivers of mid-size church vans of up to 30 people to avoid having to obtain a commercial driver’s license.
The bill was designed to help smaller churches that have limited resources.
This just allows small churches, some don’t have people with commercial licenses at all, and they can pick a person to drive the bus,” Democrat Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez told the Clarion-Ledger.
The church bus drivers will also not be required to have the state passenger transport endorsement, which is a requirement of most Mississippi bus drivers.
However, CDL drivers in the state are not happy about the law.
“I think this bill is trading the safety of everyone on the road for the convenience of those operating church vehicles,” CDL driver Troy Coll said. “Since the bill covers vehicles up to 30 passengers, we’re not just talking vans with extra rows of seats – these are buses, with long frames and much larger blind spots than passenger vehicles.”
“Obtaining a CDL is not especially difficult,” Coll added, “but the testing does increase the level of scrutiny on drivers, and the medical requirements prevent individuals with poor vision/hearing/motor control or untreated diabetes from driving large vehicles full of vulnerable passengers.”
A Texas lawmaker is standing up to say that just because a woman is brain dead it doesn’t mean the baby inside her is also dead.
Rep. Matt Krause is creating a bull that would allow the baby in the case to have his or her own representative in court to argue for the life of the child.
“You’ll hear what the family wants, and you’ll also give the pre-born child a chance to have a voice in court at that same time,” Krause told the Dallas Morning News. “The judge weighs everything and he or she makes their decision based on that.”
The proposed law in the wake of the case of Marlise Munoz, a 33-year-old woman who was found unconscious in the middle of the night. Doctors say Marlise had suffered a blood clot in her lung which caused her to collapse. She spent two months at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth where the baby had a measurable heartbeat despite the mother being brain dead.
The woman’s husband and parents wanted to end the life of Marlise and the unborn child as per her request. She did not want to be “kept alive by machines.”
The hospital said they could not remove Munoz from life support because of a Texas state law that prohibits the removal of life support to a pregnant woman. Judge R.H. Wallace said that the woman was technically dead and so the law didn’t apply to her, allowing Erick Munoz, Lynne Machado and her husband to end the life of Marlise and the unborn baby.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down North Carolina’s law requiring mothers to obtain an ultrasound prior to killing their child via abortion.
The court agreed with the lower court that the requirement is unconstitutional because it violates the “right to free speech.”
North Carolina lawmakers passed the Women’s Right to Know Act in 2011, which required women to obtain an ultrasound prior to an abortion, and that the abortionist describe the child’s features to the mother, as well as offer the opportunity to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. The governor at the time, Beverly Purdue vetoed the bill because of her endorsement of abortion. The legislators overruled the veto.
Mega-abortionist Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and the Center For Reproductive Rights sued to block the law and it was struck down by Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles as “an impermissible attempt to compel providers to deliver the state’s message in favor of childbirth and against abortion.”
“This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind,” the panel wrote in support of Eagles’ ruling. “The First Amendment not only protects against prohibitions of speech, but also against regulations that compel speech. A regulation compelling speech is by its very nature content-based, because it requires the speaker to change the content of his speech or even to say something where he would otherwise be silent.”
Attorney General Roy Cooper, who said he personally opposes the law, said he will appeal because it’s his responsibility to defense state law regardless of his personal beliefs.
Massachusetts lawmakers passed a new law to restrict pro-life protesters who would be outside an abortion clinic after the Supreme Court struck down their previous law.
The new law, which is titled An Act to Promote Public Safety and Protect Access to Reproductive Health Care Facilities”, will now allow police to break up any protest that the police say are “impeding access” to an abortion clinic and then ban anyone at the protest from being within 25 feet of a clinic for 8 hours.
The governor said he was “proud to sign” the bill that can allow police to bully those who believe in the value of life.
The law will be challenged in court by pro-life groups.
“We are deeply disturbed at this legislature’s efforts to silence the voices of those they disagree with. We thank those legislators who voted against this new legislation, and we will closely monitor how this law is being carried out,” stated Massachusetts Citizens For Life. “Rest assured that Massachusetts Citizens For Life will be doing everything in its power to ensure that the voices of pro-life individuals are protected.”
The Alabama Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling for the rights of unborn children.
In an 8 to 1 decision, the Court ruled that the state’s child protection laws apply to unborn children, declaring that the court believes a child in the womb has a right to life.
The ruling came in the case of a woman who had been using cocaine while pregnant. When her child was born, the infant has cocaine in their system and the mother was charged with violation of the state’s chemical endangerment statute.
Her lawyers claimed that an unborn child was not a child under the definition of state law.
Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel applauded the court’s decision.
“In an age where some judges do not know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or do not even care, finally the Alabama Supreme Court springs forth with a ray of light,” Staver said in a statement.
Canada’s Supreme Court voted unanimously Friday to strike down all of the country’s anti-prostitution laws.
Anyone in Canada will be able to engage in prostitution in any form and be free to own & operate a brothel in the country. The order from the court has been placed on a one-year hold to give the Parliament an opportunity to respond with new legislation.
The laws struck down make it illegal to run a brothel; to live off the avails of prostitution and soliciting on the street for prostitution.
An appeals court in Ontario had previously struck down the brothel ban saying it exposed women to more danger.
Sex trade workers across the country celebrated the ruling.