A Pro-Life Advocacy Group in Michigan has filed paperwork to begin a petition drive to ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure. The petition comes after Michigan's Republican-backed Legislature earlier this week voted to ban the “dilation and evacuation method” or “D&E method” of terminating a pregnancy.
Governor and Democrat Gretchen Whitmer responded, telling media outlets that “these decisions should always be made between a woman and her doctor” and that she would veto the legislation when it arrived on her desk.
Anti-abortion group Right to Life of Michigan counter attacked, and launched a citizens' initiative identical to the legislation.
Genevieve Marnon is the legislative Director, for Right to Life of Michigan. She says the method should be called ‘dismemberment.’
“You know the other side likes to say ‘well that is not a medical term,’ well it is a medical term, if you look in a medical dictionary, the term ‘dismemberment’ means ‘to remove a limb,’ Marnon said. "And that’s exactly what happens in a D&E or dismemberment abortion. A tortuous, inhumane, barbaric procedure, and we think it’s high time for this procedure to end.”
The group needs to collect about 340,000 valid voter signatures. If it does, the Legislature could enact the initiated legislation on its own and sidestep a Whitmer veto.