With the West Alabama Women’s Center—with support from the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and other liberal pro-abortion activists—challenging Alabama’s law prohibiting dismemberment abortions, Liberty Counsel has stepped forward in defense of life.

In filing an amicus brief on behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists and the American College of Pediatricians, Liberty Counsel attorneys have written that dilation and extraction abortions, based on the medical evidence of unborn children’s ability to feel intense pain, are both “barbaric” and “gruesome.” It argues that the Alabama law protects the health and safety of the mothers as well as furthering the state’s “compelling interests in respecting the life of the unborn child, preventing cruel and unusual punishment and protecting the ethics and integrity of the medical profession.”

The brief details medical experts’ testimony to Congress and in other states that demonstrate unborn children can respond to painful stimuli as early as the eighth week of development. It also details the emotional and psychological toll that can be inflicted upon physicians who perform these D&E abortions.

Click here to read the entire brief.

“We give our pets greater legal protections than we provide to the future citizens of America who have proven their humanity and their sensitivity to pain,” Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said. “Alabama’s law is a commonsense solution to a barbaric and gruesome procedure.”