Republicans in the House passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors act with just one Democratic vote, following a highly partisan debate on the House floor.
The bill passed in the House along partisan lines, 217-204, with just one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX), voting in favor. Another, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), voted “present.”
The measure will not advance further because the Senate failed to gain a two-thirds majority in the cloture vote on the measure Wednesday. No Democrats in the Senate voted for the bill.
The bill requires that any healthcare provider present at the time a child is born alive during an abortion “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care professional would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
Healthcare providers would also be required to “ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.”
Providers who do not supply abortion survivors with the same care as they would an infant born under different circumstances would face financial penalties and up to five years in prison.
The bill also explicitly defines an abortion as “the use or prescription of an instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance or device to intentionally kill the unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant.” The definition of abortion in the bill excludes any induction to deliver a child alive or to “remove a dead unborn child.”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) called the treatment of children born-alive “tantamount to child abuse.”
“These children are not junk! They cannot be treated as so much garbage!” said Smith, an outspoken anti-abortion advocate.
During floor debates, the primary argument against the bill from Democrats was that the bill would not allow for doctors or families to choose palliative care in cases where infants are likely to die within moments after birth.
Several Democratic representatives shared their respective miscarriage histories and tragic stories of pregnancy loss, saying that the bill would have made doctors and healthcare providers afraid to provide proper care in emergency situations.
“When will they stop feeding on other people’s tragedies,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). “We don’t need MAGA in the delivery room.”
Raskin also said that the bill is a “legislative redundancy,” highlighting the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002. That bill, though, does not mandate lifesaving care, nor does it impose penalties for not providing care.
Nebeyatt Betre, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Washington Examiner that the Republican “obsession with denying women care and threatening doctors is disturbing, yet unsurprising.”
“After consistently lying to voters on the campaign trail about their extreme anti-choice, anti-women agenda, House Republicans are already working to punish women with legislation that does nothing but further threaten reproductive freedom everywhere,” said Betre.
Between 2003 and 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded approximately 143 infants died after being born alive during an abortion. The CDC estimates roughly 1% of all abortions in the United States occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy, approximately the age at which a fetus could be viable outside the womb.
A study published in June found that, between 1989 and 2021, more than 11% of 13,000 abortions between 15 and 29 weeks of pregnancy in Canada resulted in live birth.
Melissa Ohden, an abortion survivor and founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, told reporters ahead of the House vote that her organization has connected with over 900 individuals who were born-alive during an abortion procedure.
Ohden said that her birth mother did not know that she was 31 weeks pregnant when she underwent a saline abortion procedure. Ohden said that the birth mothers of most abortion survivors did not receive medical screenings to determine gestational age.
“This is one of those things I would like members of Congress to understand. If they would be willing to sit down and listen to me and my staff and other abortion survivors, I think they would see how diverse our experiences are and what the impact is on all of us, and hopefully take down some of this polarization,” said Ohden.
Marjorie Dannefelser, president of anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, told reporters that the vote indicates Democrats “need to adjust their approach to abortion” in advance of the midterm elections.
“If you’re a member of the House, or you’re a member of the Senate and you voted against this measure, you absolutely deserve to lose your next race, and we will make sure that you are a target,” said Dannefelser.