Next week, the Senate is voting on two bills that protect the lives of our country’s most vulnerable — the preborn.
The first piece of legislation is S. 3275, The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Pain-Capable bans abortion after 20 weeks gestational age due to overwhelming scientific evidence that babies at this age can feel pain. In fact, there has been recent evidence that babies can feel pain earlier than this.
Not only can a child at 20 weeks feel pain, their movement can usually be felt by the mother and they can hear. Medical care has continued to advance and babies that are born extremely pre-term, like Elle Schneider, who was born at 21 weeks and 6 days, survive. Ellie is now a happy 2 year-old.
There are exceptions in this legislation allowing for abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. However, in these cases, an abortion procedure that is most likely to save the life of the child is required. Secondly, if the child is born alive, they must receive adequate medical care.
The second piece of legislation is the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act or S. 130. Specifically, Born-Alive requires medical personnel to perform the same life-saving measures on an infant born-alive, after a failed abortion attempt, that they would provide to any other baby born at the same gestational age. These healthcare practitioners must also immediately transport and admit the infant to a hospital where they can continue to receive care.
Lawmakers who do not support Born-Alive forget that the legislation doesn’t hamper a women from getting an abortion, rather it ensures that babies who survive an attempted abortion receive the medical attention they deserve. Opponents claim the law is redundant and abortion survivors are extremely rare. We know that these claims are false, with only a handful of states having any protections for babies born from a botched abortion and there are many abortion survivors.
Both Pain-Capable and Born-Alive are of utmost importance as they protect a preborn baby’s personhood. Anti-lifers are so extreme in their convictions that every woman deserves a right to abortion, they consistently undermine the fact that preborn babies are people too. Please join Eagle Forum in asking your Senator to vote YES on Pain-Capable and Born-Alive.
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