The House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act this week.
The legislation would require healthcare practitioners to provide care to babies born alive following a failed abortion.
According to ABC News, the bill still needs to be approved in the Senate and then signed by President Joe Biden, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the bill is “extreme” and “doomed in the Senate.”
“American women deserve to have their right to healthcare protected, not undermined,” Schumer said in a statement.
Failed abortions where babies are born alive are very rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only .9 percent of abortion procedures occurr after 21 weeks.
In Minnesota, which tracks cases of failed abortions, the state reported more than 10,000 total abortions performed in 2017, and there were only three cases where an infant was born alive.
Under the proposed act, healthcare providers would have to provide the same level of care to an infant born alive despite an abortion as would be given to a child born alive at the same gestational age.
Violations of the proposed law would carry fines, up to five years in prison time, or both.
Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner (R) introduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
Planned Parenthood released a statement saying the bill is unnecessary.
“This bill is deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant people and the doctors and nurses who provide their care. It is yet another attempt by anti-abortion politicians to spread misinformation as a means to their warped political end: to ban safe and legal abortion,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns at Jacqueline Ayers said of the bill in a statement.
A second abortion bill passed in the House condemns violence against facilities, groups and churches that are opposed to abortions.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Jacek Sopotnicki
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
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