AUSTIN — The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services heard public comments Wednesday on two bills lauded by abortion foes. They would ban what abortion opponents call "partial-birth" and "dismemberment" abortions.

The phrases aren't used in textbooks to define medical procedures. So what exactly are lawmakers trying to block?

Dr. Bhavik Kumar, the Texas medical director for Whole Woman's Health, and Dr. Diane Horvath-Cosper, a Maryland-based OB-GYN and abortion provider, explain standard procedures and what the bills propose to do:

Current Texas law

Texas women can have an abortion up to 22 weeks from their last menstrual period. Any later, and a woman can have the procedure only if her life is in danger.

If she's within the 22-week window, she is required to have an ultrasound 24 hours before having an abortion, the result of a 2011 law signed by Rick Perry, who was then governor. Abortion providers fought the measure because it forces women to make two trips to a clinic for one procedure.

Abortion providers are also required to give women a booklet titled "Women's Right to Know" 24 hours ahead of an abortion. The booklet has come under fire for citing refuted research that links abortion to a heightened risk of breast cancer.

In 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law requiring women to offer documentation proving they're not a minor before they can have an abortion. The law was part of a package of bills aimed at tightening restrictions on the legal bypass option that minors can use to obtain an abortion without parental consent.

Standard procedures

For the most part, Horvath-Cosper said surgical abortion procedures use "a combination of suction and instruments to empty the uterus."

"That is the very standard, normal way to manage both abortion care and pregnancy loss," said Horvath-Cosper, a reproductive health advocacy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, a New York-based nonprofit. "We assess a patient as an individual and we determine the most appropriate care."

Earlier in a pregnancy, Kumar said providers can rely solely on suction to perform an abortion. As a pregnancy progresses, doctors may need to use additional instruments. These later-term abortions that involve removing tissue with a combination of suction and instruments are commonly referred to as dilation and evacuation procedures.

Most abortions occur during the "embryonic stage," nine to 11 weeks into a pregnancy, Kumar said.

'Dismemberment' abortion

Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, made banning "dismemberment" abortions its top priority for the session, tapping Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, and Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, to carry bills detailing the ban.

Perry's bill describes a "dismemberment" abortion as one that "extracts the unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or a similar instrument."

Horvath-Cosper said the phrase "dismemberment" abortion doesn't describe a medical procedure, thus providers would have difficulty following a law banning such an abortion.

"I think the intention for using some of the terms that are used is to be inflammatory," she said. "The medical reality is that we provide care to patients according to their needs, and we can't interpret these laws from a medical perspective because they don't use medical terms."

The description offered in the bill worries Kumar because it could refer to some dilation and evacuation procedures, when a doctor sometimes removes tissue in pieces.

"I think they're using that word to invoke emotion in people, and I worry about what the perception is when they hear that word, because it can be alarming," he said. "But it's the safest way to do the procedure, and as a physician taking care of somebody, I want to be able to use the safest method available."

'Partial-birth' abortion

Banning "partial-birth" abortions is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's priorities for the session and is backed by Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group. Republican Sen. Charles Schwertner is carrying the bill in the Senate, along with a handful of co-authors.

A "partial-birth abortion" — as described in Schwertner's bill — is one in which a provider "deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until ... the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother or for a breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother" and then "kills the partially delivered living fetus."

Kumar said the phrase "partial-birth abortion" was coined by anti-abortion lawmakers and that the bill refers to a dilation and extraction abortion, an illegal late-term procedure in which a fetus is removed from the uterus intact. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on this type of abortion in 2007.

"Because it was outlawed, I didn't really train in [dilation and extraction] procedures," he said.