New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand defended her votes for late-term abortions and infanticide Tuesday with a ridiculous claim that protecting babies’ lives violates “religious freedom.”
The pro-abortion Democrat helped defeat two pro-life bills in the U.S. Senate earlier this week. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would have required basic medical care for infants who survive abortions while the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would have banned abortions after 20 weeks when strong scientific evidence indicates unborn babies can feel pain.
“This is part of President Trump and Mitch McConnell’s all-out assault on women,” Gillibrand told MSNBC this week. “They’re trying to harm women.”
The Blaze reports Gillibrand slammed both bills during the interview, claiming protecting unborn babies from death somehow violates “religious freedom” and “human rights.”
“They’re trying to take away their civil rights, their human rights, their ability to make the most important, intimate decisions of their lives,” she claimed. “They’re taking away their religious freedom. They’re taking away their moral freedom.”
What protecting babies from abortion has to do with religious freedom, Gillibrand did not say. While many pro-lifers are religious and some abortion activists claim to be, too, abortion is fundamentally a human rights issue. Religious or not, many people agree that the government should protect human rights for all human beings, including unborn babies.
Even Gillibrand admitted that the legislation she opposes involves a child, an innocent human being.
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“These two measures that we’re voting on literally changes the landscape of how we treat a baby who was born, who cannot survive outside the womb and how those parents want to be able to have those final moments with their child,” she told MSNBC. “It is a horrible, horrible choice by Mitch McConnell to force these votes, and we’ve voted on these measures before and they’ve lost. I think this is just a political ploy to satisfy those who are attending the CPAC conference.”
But Gillibrand is wrong about the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and abortions in general.
Viable infants can and do survive abortions, and they can grow into thriving adults if given the proper medical care. Statistics suggest there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of babies who survive abortions every year in America, and at least 12,000 unborn babies are killed every year in abortions after 20 weeks. What’s more, evidence indicates many late-term abortions are done for purely elective reasons, not because the baby or mother has health problems.
The Born-Alive bill simply requires the same degree of medical care be offered to an infant who survives an abortion as would be provided to any other baby born at the same gestational age. It protects infants from infanticide by neglect.
Both of the bills that Gillibrand opposed are common-sense legislation that should have received overwhelming bipartisan support. A June Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans want all (21%) or almost all (39%) abortions made illegal. In contrast, 38 percent said they want all (25%) or almost all (13%) abortions legal.
Similarly, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that just 6% of Americans said abortions should be allowed “up until the birth of the child.”
Gillibrand has a 100-percent pro-abortion voting record. In 2019, she also voted against a bill to protect newborns from infanticide.
