DOVER, Delaware, May 9, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) -- Pro-life lawmakers in Delaware introduced legislation Tuesday that would prohibit aborting babies at or after 20 weeks, or five months, of pregnancy.

The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would make it a felony for abortionists to perform an abortion at 20 weeks, Delaware Online reports, punishable by up to eight years in prison. Delaware 105.9 FM adds that “well over a hundred” pro-lifers gathered outside the state’s Legislative Hall for the bill’s announcement.

The bill would permit exceptions only for a "serious health risk to the unborn child's mother," which are defined solely as physical threats and specifically exclude “psychological or emotional” claims, which the Supreme Court has defined broadly enough to to render laws with mental health exceptions toothless.

"I believe that most of the people in our nation care about the life of the unborn child, especially when it reaches the age where it could survive outside the womb," state Sen. Bryant Richardson, one of the bill’s Republican sponsors, said at the event. “If the general public was aware of how horrendous this is, and that's what we hope to do through introducing this legislation, they would want it to stop."

Supporters also called attention to the fact that a variety of medical literature suggests preborn babies are capable of feeling pain by 20 weeks. “Fetuses who are victims of abortion react to painful stimuli with the same physiological responses as any other human being would display,” Dr. Donna Harrison of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists said at the event, such as “an increase in heart rate, an increase in stress hormones in the blood stream and a withdrawal from painful stimuli.”

Harrison also explained that five-month-old preborn babies can potentially survive outside the womb, and that aborting them is never necessary to save their mothers’ lives.

"If an obstetrician, gynecologist needs to separate a mom and a fetus to save the mom's life, that OBGYN doctor takes her into the hospital, puts her under supervision, takes her to the operating room, does a caesarean section, all of this to preserve her life and the life of her baby," Harrison continued. "Babies after 20 weeks can live outside the mom, especially if they're given good care immediately on separation, but an abortionist on the other hand intends to kill the baby.”

She also highlighted the violent nature of the dilation and extraction (D&E) abortion procedure most commonly used that late in pregnancy. “The mother’s womb is opened to allow a forceps to be introduced. Then the living baby is pulled apart in pieces,” she said. "It is hard to imagine a more gruesome way to die.”

“If veterinarians ripped apart living dogs or cats to kill them in the same way that living human unborn children are ripped apart in the D&E procedure, the outcry would be deafening,” Harrison declared.

Planned Parenthood of Delaware CEO Ruth Lytle-Barnaby denounced the bill as “absolutely unacceptable,” and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) denies that preborn babies can feel pain at 20 weeks.

However, rather than a neutral medical arbiter, the ACOG is a pro-abortion organization that advocates for forcing medical professionals to participate in abortions, and in the 1960s redefined conception to mean implantation rather than fertilization, for the purpose of making contraception more culturally acceptable.

Richardson wants the state Senate to vote on the measure by the end of the current session. Democrats currently control both chambers of Delaware’s legislature as well as the governorship, making its success unlikely. Last year, the legislature passed a bill enshrining a state “right” to abortion even if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

17 states currently ban abortions at 20 weeks, while legislation protecting babies earlier in pregnancy has gained momentum in recent months. Last month, Mississippi banned abortions at 15 weeks (though a legal challenge is currently preventing it from taking effect), and Louisiana is likely to pass a similar law. Last week, Iowa enacted a law banning abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected.