Normally,as happened in 2002, such a piece of legislation would pass unanimously or close to it, for who could be in favor of killing a child AFTER is has been born? But, abortion being the Idol worshipped by today’s Progressive left, anything that could be construed as limiting the practice of abortion is the line they will not cross.
All the Republicans who voted (there were three who were absent) cast votes in favor of the legislation, as did three Democrats (Senators Manchin from West Virginia, Jones from Alabama, and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey). Two independents and all the other Democrats voted against the act – including all those Senators who are running for President. Sadly, a margin of 53% wasn’t enough, as under the Senate’s increasingly ridiculous rules, the measure required 60 votes, a level that wouldn’t have been attained even had all the absentees voted for it. We have noted in the past how the Senate rules have prevented the passage of hundreds of pieces of worthwhile legislation, and the time is long since past that those rules should be changed, but let’s concentrate on the act itself and why those 44 Senators cast “nay” votes.
A few of them said that “infanticide already is illegal,” thus the act was redundant and a waste of time – but Senators vote in favor of duplicative, repetitious and redundant legislation all the time – often getting headlines for “introducing” a bill covering something that already is on the books, so that is not much of an argument. Besides, the 2002 act defined the babies as human persons but did not say they should receive medical treatment. The 2019 act would have done so. Several senators indicated that their opposition is because the bill was some type of “end run” attempt to eliminate abortion, but the language of the act does not support that claim. Besides, the 53 senators who voted in favor of the act did not see those objections as valid. Planned Parenthood claims that the practice of killing abortion survivors “doesn’t exist in medicine or reality” but the Centers for Disease Control disagrees and has found that between the years 2003 and 2014 there were at least 143 babies who survived abortion, 118 of which lived more than ten minutes and 15 of which lived more than five hours. Not a large number, to be sure, but should even one baby be drowned in a bucket, have its neck broken, or be left in a closet to die? Those are three of the methods that were used to kill babies who did survive their abortion attempt. If, under the law, such babies are “human persons,” how can they be denied medical care and hospitalization? The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act would have protected those “human persons,” and it is shameful that so many senators chose not to protect them.