Monday night Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska introduced a bill to the United States Senate requesting a unanimous vote to condemn infanticide and make it illegal. What should have been a cut and dry unanimous decision ended up being blocked by Senate Democrats.
Senator Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act simply sought “to prohibit 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.”
The bill had nothing to do with a woman’s “right to choose,” “reproductive healthcare,” Roe v. Wade, or even abortion limits. It was about protecting newborn children.
After the New York Abortion bill stripped away protections for newborn children and the recent statements made by Virginia’s Governor Northam and state Senator Tran supporting infanticide, this bill would make such heinous actions illegal.
Coincidentally, this bill bears a striking resemblance to the three Illinois senate bills then-Senator Barack Obama shot down in 2001, 2002, and 2003.
Senator Sasse made it quite clear that this was not about babies in the womb who the democrats constantly dehumanize, rather the bill sought to protect newborns that survived abortions —newborns who should possess the right to life under the Declaration of Independence.
“We are actually talking about babies that have been born. The only debate on the floor tonight is about infanticide,” Sasse said, “Everyone in this Senate ought to be able to say that the little baby deserves life, that she has rights, and that killing her is wrong.”
All of the Democrat senators left the chambers except for Washington Senator Patty Murray. She objected to the bill saying it was unnecessary because there were already laws in place outlawing such infanticide. One would think that were true, but it is not. In reality only 26 states have laws in place protecting newborns that survived abortions.
After Murray left, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst took the floor.
“There is nothing great, there is nothing moral or even humane, about the discussion that we have before us today,” Ernst stated, “Somehow this conversation has devolved so completely that a bill prohibiting the murder of children who are born alive. A bill that simply prohibits infanticide, has tonight been blocked on the floor of the Senate.”
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford asked how it could even be a discussion on the senate floor.
He went on to say, “It used to be my Democratic colleagues said life begins at birth. Now, apparently, it’s not at birth anymore. It’s unknown when life begins. Because it’s a discussion now at birth.”
Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mike Braun of Indiana also shared their disgust that anyone would object to such a common-sense bill.
Why, might you ask, would Democrats block a bill that did something as basic as making infanticide illegal?
National Review Staff Writer Alexandra Desanctis explains, “although the bill doesn’t restrict abortion rights, it brings into crystal-clear focus the irrationality of the pro-abortion position. If those who support abortion concede that perhaps there is something wrong with permitting an infant to die the moment after birth if it was meant to have been aborted one minute earlier, suddenly the question becomes, Why is it acceptable to perform that abortion one minute earlier?”
Desanctis continues, “If the infant has moral status when it is wholly outside the womb, why not one minute earlier when it is partially, or even wholly, inside his or her mother? Does the moral status of this human being hinge on its developmental stage or its location? These are the types of questions that defenders of the abortion movement will do anything to avoid confronting.”
In the past the Democratic Party was known as the the party of Jim Crow, segregation, & slavery. But that is all in the past. After Monday night they became known as the party of infanticide.
God help us.
Nick is a former pro-life campus leader with a passion for truth. Influenced by his faith, science, and human rights advocates of the past, he speaks out as a voice for the voiceless.
