Earlier this week, a disastrous display of immorality unfolded on the floor of the U.S. Senate when a vote was set for the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” that led Virginia’s representation in the upper chamber – Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner – to join a contingent of 44 Democrats to vote against the legislation. The bill, which came out of a renewed national debate on protecting the lives of infants, would have required doctors to give the same care to infants who survive abortion procedures that they would give to any other of the same gestational age.
Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) reintroduced the bill following the comments that came forth a few weeks ago from Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D), who doubled down on his support for legislation from Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates to repeal any and all meaningful restrictions on third-trimester abortions. The bill from Delegate Kathy Tran (D-Springfield), also known as the Repeal Act, would allow abortion doctors to self-certify the necessity of late-term procedures, eliminate informed consent requirements, repeal abortion clinic health and safety standards, permit late-term abortions to be performed in outpatient clinics, remove ultrasound requirements, and eliminate Virginia’s 24-hour waiting period.
After a release of a House subcommittee video detailing the seemingly sinister nature of the legislation, Governor Northam attempted to explain the bill on a radio show days later, positing an endorsement of permitting mothers and doctors to let infants die of neglect.
“The infant would be delivered,” Northam said, explaining a hypothetical case in which an expectant woman in labor wanted an abortion. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
The legislation and subsequent exchange angered pro-life advocates nationwide, which spawned a series of protests in Richmond at the Capitol Building, also garnering a rebuke from President Donald Trump during his “State of the Union” address earlier this month. During his speech, the commander in chief slammed Northam’s “infanticide” comments, charging both houses of Congress to pass legislation to prohibit late-term abortions, and “defend the dignity of every person,” and “children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.”
Sasse’s bill, S.130, would protect newborns that survive abortions by requiring appropriate care and admission to a hospital. The bill mandates that when an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, physicians and healthcare practitioners must exercise the same degree of professional skill and care to protect the newborn as would be offered to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.
Regardless, Democrats, the “party of science” as they’re forever calling themselves, took to the Senate floor on Monday to accost the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, criticizing it as an attack on women’s reproductive rights. In the process, they revealed their belief that allowing unwanted infants to perish after birth constitutes a form of women’s healthcare.
While the bill failed to pass, what it did was solidify 44 positions in the Senate to not extend healthcare of any kind to newborn infants – coming from the party that supports “Medicare for All.”
Moreover, it embraces the position of Governor Northam and the Democratic bloc in the Virginia legislature, and in other states like New York, despite any attempts to clarify their “infanticide” argument, or lack thereof.
When it comes to an unborn child being protected and given a chance to live outside the womb of an expectant mother, modern science has led to fetal viability being established near 21 weeks. With medical advancements, the gestational age at which a child could live outside the womb will become less and less.
However, “the party of science” does not only disregard this medical achievement by failing to protect the unborn at younger fetal ages, but is now fully set on forwarding logical inconsistencies by not protecting children that have already been born. Though, this notion is shrouded in the political fog of “reproductive rights.”
Although the legislation is dead for now, the vote revealed the sanctimonious nature of the Democratic Party. The vote compelled lawmakers to defend the indefensible, put names to those disregarding life, and codified the consistent logical and philosophical irregularities of the dehumanization and political categorization that governs the liberal point of view.