Michigan Partial-Birth Abortion and ‘Dismemberment Abortion’ Ban Act (HB 4833)

HB 4833 would amend current state law to prohibit physicians, unless necessary to save the life of the mother, from performing “partial-birth abortion” or “dismemberment abortion.”

Under this bill, any physician that knowingly performs a “partial-birth abortion” or “dismemberment abortion” and “kills a human fetus” would be guilty of a felony punishable by up to two years imprisonment and/or a $50,000 fine.

HB 4833 defines “dismemberment abortion” as an abortion that uses “any instrument, device or object to dismember a living fetus by disarticulating limbs or decapitating the head from the fetal torso.”

This law targets a procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D and E), which is frequently used during second-trimester abortions. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an abortion using suction aspiration can be performed up to 14 weeks’ gestation, but after 14 weeks the D and E procedure must be used to perform an abortion. As such, dilation and evacuation bans, depending upon their language, may ban all surgical abortion past 14 weeks’ gestation. (Source.)

As reported by RH Reality Check:

“The bill also seems to include contradictory language by defining a dismemberment abortion as taking place “regardless of whether the fetal body parts are removed by the same instrument, device or object or by suction or other means,” but then clarifies that the definition does not include any abortion that “uses suction to dismember or remove the body of a fetus.”

The bill’s broad and vague language and lack of medical terminology makes the possible implications on abortion care unclear.”

STATUS

Similar to HB 4834.

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