It’s been a month since Pennsylvanian Republican Rep. Fred Keller was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives and added his name to the discharge petition seeking to bring the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to a vote.
The petition requires 218 signatures; Keller’s brought the total to 201. Every Republican and three Democrats (Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, Rep. Collin Peterson of North Dakota, and Rep. Ben Rep. McAdams of Utah) have signed.
Are there another 17 Democrats with the courage and compassion to sign this petition?
Apparently not.
Six Democrats voted in favor of the Born-Alive bill in the 115th Congress, and five of them are still in office. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas voted for the bill last year and is a cosponsor of the current bill in the 116th Congress. But in an email from Cuellar’s legislative representative, my office was informed that he will not be signing the discharge petition.
Reps. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania also voted for the bill in the 115th Congress and yet their names are nowhere to be found on the discharge petition. Did they support life-saving care for newborns last year but have a change of heart once their party took over the majority?
House Republicans have done everything they can to bring this bill to the floor. On 67 separate occasions (and counting), members rose and asked for the bill to be considered. Many of them spoke eloquently about the bill and the newborn babies it seeks to save. On every one of those separate occasions, they were denied by Democrat leadership.
The Senate version of the bill also was denied a vote. A cloture vote on March 22 fell seven votes short of the 60 needed to bring the bill itself up for a vote. Fifty-three senators, among them only three Democrats (Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia; Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama) voted in favor. Forty-four Democrats were too heartless to do so.
The Born-Alive bill, despite having the word “abortion” in its title, does not prohibit any abortions. It would in no way cause the courts to find an “undue burden” to a woman seeking to abort her child, nor would it in any way restrict access. It has nothing to do with waiting periods, or mandatory ultrasounds, or parental consent. It does not require abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges nor does it require abortion businesses to meet the standards of every other ambulatory surgical clinic in the country.
The Born-Alive Bill deals only with a child who survives an abortion and finds him or herself, in the first minutes of their life, in the company of the mother who chose her death and the abortionist who tried their best to kill her. What happens next is what the bill covers.
In both the Senate and House versions, the bill would “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.” This proper degree of care includes transport to a hospital, since abortion facilities are only equipped for killing.
The bill also defines the newborn survivor of an abortion as “a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws,” and entitled to “the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn, or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care.”
In other words, “fetus” and “choice” are no longer applicable once a child survives abortion. This brand new citizen of the United States would have the same rights and protections as you and I. Anyone who witnesses this birth or is aware that the law is not being followed would be a mandatory reporter. Abortionists who fail to follow the law could be sent to prison for up to five years and subject to fines. Mothers of abortion survivors would not be penalized, but neither would they be able to ask the abortionist to finish the job.
While the House Judiciary committee holds the bill hostage, its subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties recently held a hearing entitled on “Threats to Reproductive Rights in America.” Abortion survivor Melissa Ohden was invited to talk about the abortion she survived at 31 weeks. After her passionate speech about her accidental birth and the nurse who rushed her to the neonatal unit and saved her life, she said, “I’m alive today because someone else’s reproductive right failed to end my life.”
After the hearing, according to Mother Jones, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, asked celebrity abortion advocate Busy Phillips, who was also invited to testify, if someone like Ohden had a right to control her own body.
“Although I play a doctor on television, sir, I am actually not a physician,” Philipps reportedly replied. And the audience laughed.
That flippant response and the laughter it elicited explains why the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act can’t even get a vote in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. The dehumanization of the child in the womb has been expanded to include even those who survive an abortion.
These days, even being alive doesn’t guarantee a human being the right to life – according to the Democratic Party, that is.
Father Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the national director of Priests for Life.
