Officials in Texas are asking the entire 17-member Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to enforce a ban on second-trimester “dismemberment abortions” until the court rules on its constitutionality. This comes after a three-judge panel of the appeals court denied a motion to allow the ban last week. 
 
The law in question seeks to end “dismemberment abortions”, or the procedure in which a fetus is physically removed from a mother’s womb using forceps and other medical tools. Abortion rights groups, referring to the procedure in question as “dilation and evacuation”, claim that banning the procedure “forces women who did not or could not get an abortion in the first trimester, to choose less safe, less effective options.”
 
The Texas law was first argued before the appellate court in November of 2018 after it was challenged by a group of abortion providers and struck down by a U.S. District Court judge in 2017. While the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Gonzales v Carhart provides states may pass laws to protect unborn life by banning inhumane abortion procedures, a U.S. District Court stopped Texas from enforcing its law. The case has remained on hold for almost three years pending a Supreme Court ruling in another abortion restriction case regarding a Louisiana law that required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The Court ruled that statute was unconstitutional in June. 

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