Durbin Statement On Voting Against Republicans' Failed "Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act"

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released the following statement after voting against cloture on the motion to proceed to Republicans’ so-calledBorn-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,legislation that would threaten health care providers with jail time and make itharder for women to access comprehensive and compassionate health care:
“Instead of addressing the health care crisis thatDobbshas unleashed, Republicans are now looking to make it even harder for women to access comprehensive and compassionate health care. Today, they attempted to bring the so-calledBorn-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Actto the floor for a vote, and they failed. The bill would have created a new standard of care for physicians providing reproductive health care that is not based in medicine, fact, or science. In fact, it is already law that any child born in America—regardless of the circumstances surrounding that birth—is afforded equal protections. The goal of this bill is to target and intimidate reproductive health care providers and make it harder for women to access vital health care. I rejected this offensive and heartless bill.”
The bill failed to advance in the Senate by a vote of 52-47. Durbinspoke outagainst the bill on the Senate floor yesterday. Despite Republicans pushing this legislation, there is already a law that ensures that any child born in America—regardless of the circumstances surrounding that birth—is afforded equal protections under the law. In 2002, the House and Senate passed—on a bipartisan basis—theBorn-Alive Infants Protection Act—which was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush.
In aletterto Congress this week, a number of medical and health professional organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said that the bill “represents a dangerous government intrusion into medical care” and “injects politicians into the patient-provider relationship, disregarding health care professionals’ training and clinical judgment and undermining their ability to determine the best course of action with their patients.”
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