Senate Democrats Block Bill Providing Care to Babies Who Survive Abortions

Senate Democrats blocked a bill that mandates medical care to babies surviving abortions.

In a 52-47 vote along party lines, the legislation failed to invoke cloture.

“Senate Democrats just voted to block the Born-Alive Act. This isn’t complicated: babies who survive a failed abortion deserve medical care. It’s truly unbelievable that protecting these precious lives is a partisan issue. I’ll never stop fighting for the voiceless,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) wrote on social media.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who introduced the bill, said on the Senate floor that while infanticide is already illegal, what is “still allowed is a tiny, little loophole that if an abortion is botched, everyone can just back away and watch the child die. They do not have to give that child medical care.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the bill “pernicious,” claiming it “attacks women’s health care using false narratives and outright fear-mongering, and adds more legal risk for doctors on something that is already illegal.”

“The scenario targeted by this bill is one of the most heartbreaking moments that a woman could ever encounter, the agonizing choice of having to end care when serious and rare complications arise in pregnancy,” Schumer said. “And at that moment of agony, this bill cruelly substitutes the judgment of qualified medical professionals, and the wishes of millions of families, and allows ultra-right ideology to dictate what they do.”

The bill would have prohibited a health care practitioner from “failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”

Although Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2022, the law did not provide measures that would enforce the protection of infants who survived botched abortions. Lankford’s bill “adds clear expectations of care, hospital transfer requirements, mandatory reporting, private rights of action for moms, and reasonable criminal penalties for health care professionals who violate the law,” a press release explains.

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