On Tuesday, after blocking action on 400 bills dealing with everything from gun safety to election security, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell forced a vote on two abortion bills — a 20-week abortion ban and a so-called “born-alive” bill.
The bills both fell short of the 60 votes needed, with the 20-week ban getting 53 yes votes to 44 no votes, and the “born-alive” bill getting 56 yes votes to 41 no votes.
While neither bill passed, they still served their intended purpose for McConnell and Republicans: further stigmatizing women seeking later abortions, threatening doctors, and drumming up support from the GOP’s conservative base ahead of the 2020 election.
Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse’s “born-alive” bill is an unnecessary piece of fearmongering that purports to solve a problem that does not exist: murder that takes place after a “botched” abortion.
Laws prohibiting murder are already on the books. As attorney and professor Neil Siegel told Politifact, “There is no lack of statutory or constitutional law that would protect babies through a live birth or a failed abortion.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill, misleadingly named the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” relies on inaccurate information unsupported by medical research.
Once again, politicians are imposing their goals — and their own, unqualified interpretations of complex medical information — on both patients and doctors.
As Jacqueline Ayers, vice president of government relations and public policy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a press release: “Health care decisions should be made by patients and their trusted health care provider, not by politicians in the Senate. […] The politicians behind these bills have one ultimate goal in mind: to ban access to safe, legal abortion in this country — and they know the public is not on their side.”
In fact, support for abortion is at record highs. A substantial majority of Americans — 77% — do not support overturning Roe v. Wade. Even a majority of Republican men don’t want to see the decision overturned.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic candidate for president, responded to McConnell’s show vote, saying, “Today’s abortion vote in the Senate is part of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated right-wing assault on reproductive rights, & I am sick & tired of it. The American people are sick & tired of it.”
