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<\/a><\/p>\nAlexandra DeSanctis
\nNational Review<\/p>\n
A<\/span>\u00a0moral catastrophe unfolded on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday. Forty-four Democratic senators voted against legislation that would have required doctors to give the same care to infants who survive abortion procedures that they would give to any other infant.<\/p>\n One after another, Democratic senators took to the floor to smear the bill as an attack on women\u2019s health care, a baseless criticism that they failed to substantiate. In the process, they revealed their belief that allowing unwanted infants to perish after birth constitutes a form of women\u2019s health care.<\/p>\n Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) reintroduced his Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in direct response to Virginia governor Ralph Northam\u2019s endorsement of permitting mothers and doctors to let infants die of neglect. \u201cThe infant would be delivered,\u201d Northam said, explaining a hypothetical case in which a woman in labor wanted an abortion. \u201cThe infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that\u2019s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n This \u201cdiscussion\u201d is what Democrats voted on Monday to preserve \u2014 a discussion not about health-care options\u00a0for women\u00a0<\/em>but about whether or not to extend health care of any kind to\u00a0newborn infants<\/em>. With their votes and their speeches, 44 U.S. senators embraced Ralph Northam\u2019s position, which, despite attempting to clarify, he has never retracted.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to ask each and every one of my colleagues whether or not we\u2019re okay with infanticide,\u201d Sasse said at the start of floor debate on Monday. \u201cThis language is blunt. I recognize that. It is too blunt for many people in this body. But frankly, that is what we\u2019re talking about here today. Infanticide is what [the bill] is actually about.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Sasse\u2019s bill failed to pass, it succeeded in forcing Democrats to take a stance on infanticide, and though they refused to do so explicitly, the reality of their disgraceful position was abundantly clear.<\/p>\n During floor debate, Senator Tina Smith (D., Minn.) said that the bill \u201cputs Congress in the middle of the important medical decisions that patients and doctors should make together without political interference.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said it represents the idea that \u201cthe moral judgment of right-wing politicians in Washington, D.C., should supersede a medical professional\u2019s judgment and a woman\u2019s decision.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes no sense for Washington politicians who know nothing about these individual circumstances to say they know better than the doctors, patients, the family,\u201d said Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). \u201cThe bill is solely meant to intimidate doctors and restrict patients\u2019 access to care and has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with protecting children.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is how our medical system is supposed to work,\u201d Smith added later in her remarks. \u201cPhysicians and patients making decisions together based on patients\u2019 individual needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois labeled the bill an effort to \u201cbully doctors out of giving reproductive care.\u201d And Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) said the legislation \u201cwould interfere with the doctor\u2013patient relationship and impose new obstacles to a woman\u2019s constitutionally protected right to make her own decisions about her reproductive health.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cConservative politicians should not be telling doctors how they should care for their patients,\u201d Hirono said. \u201cInstead, women, in consultation with their families and doctors, are in the best position to determine their best course of care.\u201d<\/p>\n All of these statements take as their premise a fundamental lie about the legislation. No part of the born-alive bill limits abortion access or regulates abortion methods in any way. It involves abortions only to the extent that the infants in question survived them. Nor does the bill mandate any particular kind of care for these infants; it merely requires that these nearly aborted newborns be afforded \u201cthe same degree\u201d of care that \u201cany other child born alive at the same gestational age\u201d would receive.<\/p>\n But these statements from Democrats are more than mere falsehoods. They expose a sinister reality: There is no daylight between their argument and that of Ralph Northam. They have admitted that they believe that denying medical care to infants can constitute legitimate women\u2019s health care, classified under the untouchable umbrella of \u201creproductive rights.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the ultimate triumph of the attempt to pass the born-alive bill. Though Democrats managed to block the legislation, it forced the moral equivocators of the Democratic party to step out from behind their smokescreens. It demanded that they put their name to a vote permitting doctors to turn a blind eye to dying babies. It compelled them to defend Ralph Northam\u2019s indefensible comments.<\/p>\n This \u2014 and not because it would impede women\u2019s \u201creproductive rights\u201d \u2014 is why Democrats were so afraid of Ben Sasse\u2019s bill. They knew that nothing in the text restricts access to abortion. But they knew, too, that it would expose them.<\/p>\n To support the bill would betray a logical and philosophical inconsistency \u2014 Democrats would affirm the dignity and rights of a newborn infant, even as they dehumanize that same life, at the same stage of development, inside its mother\u2019s womb. To oppose the bill would reveal the ghastly, consistent principle of the abortion-rights movement \u2014 that a child\u2019s rights depend not on her size or location, but on whether she is wanted by her mother.<\/p>\n The Democrats chose consistency, and consistency means infanticide.<\/p>\n