Diyar Guldogan
23 January 2025•Update: 23 January 2025
WASHINGTON
US Senate Democrats blocked a bill Wednesday ensuring that newborns surviving abortions would receive care from health care providers.
Senators voted 52-47 on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires any health care practitioner present to provide the same level of medical attention and treatment to a baby born alive during an abortion procedure as they would to any other baby born at the same gestational age.
"Any infant born alive after an abortion or within a hospital, clinic, or other facility has the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn, or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care," the bill said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the bill is a partisan "attack" on reproductive rights, medical professionals and American women.
"The bill we’re voting on today, the Republicans’ so-called Born Alive bill, is as pernicious as they come. It attacks women’s health care using false narratives and outright fear-mongering, and it adds more legal risk for doctors on something that is already illegal," Schumer told the Senate floor.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said this should not be a "controversial bill."
"We should all be able to agree that a baby born alive after an attempted abortion must be protected, and yet I fully expect that later today, my Democrat colleagues will vote ‘no’ on this legislation," he told the Senate floor.
