Maine state Senate Democrats blocked a proposed amendment on Tuesday to a late-term abortion bill that would have placed a four-year moratorium on the trafficking of fetal remains leftover from late-term abortions, the Maine Wire reported.
Republican state Sen. Eric Brakey proposed the amendment and stated that if the late-term abortion bill passes (LD 1619) “the least we can do it to establish this moratorium on the trafficking of fetal body parts so that the legislature can thoughtfully consider the issue in the coming years and develop more permanent policy.” Trafficking in fetal remains would have been a Class C crime under the amendment.
Lawmakers ultimately voted 23-11 in favor of Democrat state Sen. Mattie Daughtry’s motion to indefinitely postpone consideration of the amendment. Every single Democrat state senator voted in favor of essentially killing Brakey’s amendment, as did Republican Sen. Rick Bennett. However, Bennett opposed the broader bill, the report states.
“If Gov. Mills’ late-term abortion bill becomes law, as now seems certain, elective late-term abortions on healthy babies will be allowed for the first time in Maine, raising a question currently unaddressed by Maine’s laws: What happens to the viable baby after an abortion clinic has ended his or her life and induced a stillbirth?” according to the report, which noted that the bill does not contain any language regulating how the bodies of aborted babies are to be disposed of.
The report noted that while pro-abortion activists have “long dismissed the connection between late-term abortion clinics and fetal tissue research” fetal remains have long been a “sought-after source of tissue for medical research.” Brakey expressed concern that Maine’s legalization of late-term abortion would “create a marketplace for aborted fetal tissues,” according to the report.
According to the report, a top advocate of the late-term abortion bill has previously been involved with late-term abortions that allegedly ended up supplying fetal tissue to researchers.
“Dr. Shannon Carr, a Maine-based OB/GYN who was tapped this year as a top late-term abortion expert by Maine Democrats and Gov. [Janet] Mills, worked at a clinic in New Mexico that supplied fetal tissue for research,” according to the report.
“Her former employer, Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, N.M., was a top supplier of fetal tissue for the University of New Mexico until an investigation found researchers had improperly supplied those samples to at least one private research facility,” the report alleges.
That investigation happened after Carr allegedly “authorized and participated in a late-term abortion that resulted in the death of 23-year-old Keisha Atkins,” the report states. Southwestern Women’s Options and the University of New Mexico Hospital system “paid a reported $1.26 million to Atkins’ family in a wrongful death case that named Carr,” according to the report.
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