The U.S. House of Representatives is captive this year to the most radical pro-abortion Democrat crowd ever to take its oath.
At the same time, great progress has been made in the U.S. Senate, notably with a probable upcoming vote on the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
Because of the Democrats and their abortion extremism, the measure was blocked from a Senate vote in 2019, but another vote is likely this term.
The Born-Alive bill is not an abortion bill. It is a compassion bill. It would not stop a single woman in this country from accessing abortion. It has nothing to do with trying to make abortion businesses safer, or ensuring that a minor girl’s parents know about the abortion. It does not attempt to ban any abortion procedure.
What it does – the only thing it does – would ensure that a baby born alive after abortion is given the same life-saving care, in a hospital, that a wanted child would receive. It would ensure that mothers and their “doctors” would no longer be the ones deciding whether this living child deserves the right to draw his next breath.
I almost never agree with the Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer – an advocate of both abortion and infanticide – but he was correct when he asserted that that there is no moral difference between a newborn and a child still in the womb. He said that, therefore, there are only two logically consistent positions: Oppose abortion or endorse infanticide.
Abortion supporters – including the Democrats in the House and Senate – by their rejection of the Born Alive bill, are really acknowledging the continuity of the human life inside and outside the womb.
They are, in fact, proving right Mother Teresa’s assertion, “If we allow that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell others not to kill each other?”
They can’t acknowledge any of this, so they obfuscate. Children are never born alive after abortion, they say. Laws already cover this remote possibility, they insist. But the truth is this does happen, as we know from the horrific Kermit Gosnell case, the experience of nurse Jill Stanek, and the incredible testimony of abortion survivors like Melissa Ohden. Late-term abortionists accidentally deliver a living child more often than we know.
And at the March for Life this year, one of the Rally speakers, Claire Culwell, will share her amazing story of having survived an abortion.
Americans need to send a message to our federal lawmakers that protecting such children once they are born should not even be a matter of debate. The most visible way we can do that is to show up at the March for Life in Washington on January 24, or the Walk for Life in San Francisco January 25, or one of any number of state marches.
Join with hundreds of thousands of like-minded people to protest legal child murder and let lawmakers know they must do whatever they can to protect children born and unborn. Passing the Born Alive bill is literally the least they can do.
Republicans are solidly behind this bill, both in the House and the Senate.
But will the Senate Democrats heed the message? Probably not.
The bill itself requires a simple majority but the path to that vote requires a 60-vote majority. The bill might well suffer the same fate it did in 2019, but the important difference is that this is an election year and the Democrats’ failure to vote on something as non-controversial as saving the life of a newborn sends a powerful message to Americans who will head to the polls in November.
If a lawmaker can’t safeguard the life of an innocent newborn, he or she doesn’t deserve our votes. It really is that simple.
And nothing is more important.
Fr. Frank Pavone is National Director, Priests for Life