Senators James Lankford of Oklahoma and John Thune of South Dakota introduced introduced a bill on Monday that would require medical facilities and providers to treat infants who survive abortions as legal persons entitled to legal protections, including providing the babies with the same level of care that would be provided to other infants.
A similar measure passed the House in January on a vote of 220 to 210, with Alaska Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola joining other Democrats in voting agains the measure. Only two Democrats voted in favor of the House bill, and all Republicans voted in favor of it.
Little information is publicly available about how many babies survive abortions. The Centers for Disease Control reported that eight states that actually tracked the data showed that between 2003 and 2014, at least 143 babies were born alive after an attempted abortion. The number of actual babies born alive during the procedure is thought to be exponentially higher nationally.
The Senate bill, like the House version, says that any health care practitioner present at the time the child is born alive during an abortion: “shall (A) exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age; and (B) following the exercise of skill, care, and diligence required under subparagraph (A), ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.”
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is also similar to legislation filed in 2019, introduced by Sens. Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey. That bill failed 53 to 44. It needed 60 votes to pass. Sen. Lisa Murkowski skipped the vote on that bill. The new bill is unlikely to reach the floor, due to the Democrat-controlled Senate. If for some reason it passed, President Joe Biden has vowed to veto it.
