OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma would ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus under a measure that lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Wednesday, a day after Kansas became the first state to prohibit the same procedure.
The Senate voted 37-4 for the bill, which now goes to Republican Gov. Mary Fallin. She has not said whether she will sign it, but she has previously signed other anti-abortion measures.
Under the bill, doctors cannot use forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in certain dilation and evacuation procedures performed in the second trimester. Of the roughly 5,000 abortions performed in Oklahoma in 2013, about 5 percent were performed using this procedure, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
Critics of the bill, including Planned Parenthood, have accused its supporters of using inflammatory and non-medical terminology “to insert politics into personal medical decisions.” Abortion rights supporters said the procedure is often the safest for women seeking to terminate pregnancies during the second trimester.