In February, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks when strong scientific evidence indicates unborn babies can feel pain. The bill also would prohibit brutal dismemberment abortions, commonly performed in the second trimester, which involve tearing apart the baby in the womb, limb by limb.While polls indicate public support for these limits, abortion activists like Lisa Perriera are working hard to keep these abortions legal in Pennsylvania.
An abortion practitioner at the Philadelphia Women’s Center, Perriera recently spoke with The Huffington Post about the legislation, calling pro-life lawmakers’ reasoning “malarkey.”
The liberal news outlet reports:
The legislation’s supporters argue that certain abortion procedures are “inhumane” and unsafe. They also say fetuses can feel pain by the 20-week mark, although medical research disputes that assertion.
Perriera, who also does advocacy work as a board member of the Women’s Law Project, a Pennsylvania-based women’s rights group, dismissed the logic of conservative lawmakers trying to justify abortion restrictions.
“These laws are always couched in the way that they are there to make things safer for women, and that is just malarkey,” she said.
Sari Stevens, Pennsylvania Planned Parenthood’s chief lobbyist, also blasted the pro-life legislation, claiming that pro-lifers are ignoring medical facts.
Perriera told the news outlet: “It is a safe medical procedure that I know how to do. If a woman is asking me to have a procedure, and that’s the right choice for her, who is a legislator to tell me that she shouldn’t be able to have that safe medical procedure?”
Abortion never is safe for the unborn child, however. And there is strong scientific evidence that unborn babies feel pain at 20 weeks or earlier, despite what abortion activists claim.