Last month, to the devastation of many, the U.S. Senate failed to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. It earned 53 votes, but needed 60 to pass. The legislation would have done nothing to restrict abortion itself, but rather would obligate that babies born alive from abortion attempts be given the same medical care which would be afforded to other babies born at that same gestational age.
The bill’s failure in the Senate means for an uncertain future. In writing for American Greatness, Rachel Bovard earlier this month highlighted the lack of clarity as to what happens next:
Moreover, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not move to reconsider the vote after it failed, meaning he does not intend to bring up the Born Alive bill again. This is a departure in treatment from what priority legislation has received this year. In January, McConnell reconsidered a Middle East security bill no fewer than four times, bringing it to the floor again and again until it achieved the necessary 60 votes. This is a tactic he has available to him on pro-life legislation as well.
Efforts have been blocked even further in the Democratically-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. That has not deterred Republican members, however, from putting their Democratic colleagues on the record as to whether or not they are willing to turn a blind eye to infanticide and the plight of babies who survive abortion attempts.
In their op-ed for Fox News, Senator James Inhofe and Minority Whip Steve Scalise lay out a plan to force a vote:
There is one way to get around Speaker Pelosi’s iron grip and demand accountability of our lawmakers—the discharge petition. If a majority of the Members of Congress sign the discharge petition on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the Speaker will be forced to bring it to the floor for a vote. Whip Scalise has begun the process of a discharge petition in the House, which will become eligible for signatures early in April.
A discharge petition means that, should it gain the necessary 218 signatures, the Born-Alive Act will be up for a vote in the House whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the pro-abortion House leadership like it or not.
Just as those of us against infanticide, a description which need not apply exclusively to pro-lifers, have contacted our Senators, so too must we contact our Congressmen.
The urgency of finding support for the discharge petition, and the act itself, is even more significant once we remind ourselves what is at stake.
No matter what the pro-infanticide crowd or the mainstream media tries to tell us about abortion survivors not existing, babies are born alive from abortions.
Are babies born alive being actively murdered? Well, testimony from medical professionals shares how babies born alive from saline abortions have been suffocated to death in a bucket.
There’s also the three life sentences Kermit Gosnell is serving for snipping the necks of babies born alive when his late-term abortions past the legal limit didn’t do enough to end their lives.
We must force ourselves, especially those of us who take issue with the Born-Alive Act, to face the reality of what happens to many babies born alive from an abortion. Many of them are denied comfort and care, and are instead left alone to cry out for attention while they must wait to die from exposure, sometimes off somewhere in a utility closet. When this is the reality for many such babies, is it really much better that they would be left alone to die from exposure, rather than being suffocated to death?
As Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, the Senate bill’s sponsor, has emphasized, denouncing infanticide need not be a partisan issue. It may be to the hyper-partisan, pro-abortion, and pro-infanticide Democratic Party. But it isn’t to the American people, with 77 percent in favor of providing care to infants born alive from abortion. On the issue of abortion overall,
Members of the House may wish to escape their feet being held to the flame when it comes to putting them on record about infanticide. But a pro-life Republican Party and the majority of Americans against infanticide must not let that happen. We must prevail with this discharge petition just as we must prevail in putting pro-infanticide Democrats on record. Lives of the most innocent, defenseless, and vulnerable Americans depend on it.
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