A New Hampshire Democrat tried to justify her vote for infanticide this week by claiming that allowing babies who survive abortions to die is somehow “helping patients.”
In an op-ed Thursday at NBC News, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen slammed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act as “dangerous and extreme.” On Tuesday, it failed in the U.S. Senate because it did not get the 60 votes necessary to overcome Democrats’ filibuster.
Sponsored by U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, the bill requires that a baby born alive during an abortion must be given the same degree of medical care that any other baby born at the same gestational age would, including transportation to a hospital. It also would enforce the protections by punishing doctors who refuse to provide basic medical care to infants.
To Shaheen, this is an outrage.
“Yes, you read that right: The GOP wanted to jail doctors who perform abortions,” she wrote. “Yes, this is happening in the United States. Yes, you should be outraged.”
She argued that women and doctors should be the ones who decide if a newborn should receive medical care or be left to die.
“Reproductive health decisions should be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor and her family and not by … the government,” she said.
The New Hampshire senator then misled readers by suggesting the legislation could jeopardize women’s lives.
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Shaheen wrote:
If this bill had become law, it would have added medical uncertainty to the laws that are already on the books that outlaw infanticide, and it would have significantly complicated options for medical procedures to save the lives of mothers.
Abortions that are performed later in pregnancy are most often done as a result of severe fetal diagnoses and the serious risks that a pregnancy poses to the life of the woman. Getting an abortion under those circumstances isn’t a decision any woman or family wants to be in a position to make; it is tragic, and it is heartbreaking. Yet this bill could subject doctors to up to five years in prison for helping patients during this time.
But her claims are not backed up by statistics or testimony from abortionists themselves. Most late-term abortions are not performed because the mother’s life is at risk or the baby has a fatal anomaly.
Abortion lobbyists admit that most late-term abortions are done on healthy mothers carrying healthy babies. Guttmacher Institute statistics also confirm that “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
What’s more, doctors say late-term abortions are never necessary if the mother’s life is at risk. A late-term abortion typically takes two to three days, and, if a mother’s life is in jeopardy, she needs care right away. Doctors said they would deliver the baby as soon as possible to care for the mother, not take the two to three days to kill the baby before treating the mother.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is common-sense legislation that should have received overwhelming bipartisan support. It does not even restrict abortions, it just ensures infants who are born alive in failed abortions receive the same basic medical care as any other child would. Statistics suggest there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of babies who survive abortions every year in America.
It is Democrats like Shaheen who are showing just how extreme they have become, ignoring the most common decency toward an infant in favor of the radical agenda of the billion-dollar abortion industry.
