On Friday, Mississippi became the newest state to ban dismemberment abortions, making it the fourth state to ban the popular method of second-trimester abortions.

“We’re making Mississippi the safest place in America for an unborn child,” Governor Phil Bryant said in a statement after signing the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.

While Pro-life advocates praised the act, Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens accused Bryant of signing “a clear attack on women’s health care as part of a plan to ban abortion across the board.”

Accusing legislators of pushing a bill “not based in science,” Laguens said her group will continue to fight to protect the rights of our patients and their access to safe medical care, no matter what.”

The Associated Press reports that Diane Derzis, the owner of the one abortion clinic in the state, says Jackson Women’s Health Organization doesn’t normally use dismemberment abortions. Dismemberment, however, is used in approximately 95 percent of second-trimester abortions.

Action in other states has been mixed. Bans in Kansas and Oklahoma have been blocked by judges, while West Virginia legislators overrode a veto to make the ban law.

“We’re not preventing a second-trimester abortion,” West Virginia state Senator Ryan Ferns, chairman of the Health and Human Resources Committee, told ABC earlier this year. “We just don’t want an unborn child to have to go through the gruesome procedure of being ripped apart limb by limb while they’re still alive.”

Bans have been introduced in numerous states, setting up a battle between abortionists who say non-dismemberment abortions are more expensive and riskier for women, and pro-life advocates who say the bans could both save lives and change how Americans view abortion.

“Banning dismemberment abortion in Mississippi has the potential to transform the debate when people realize that living unborn children are being killed by being torn limb from limb,” said National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D, according to LifeSiteNews.