Republican Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri went to the House floor on Jan. 11, 2023, to promote a bill she was sponsoring.
It focused on newborn babies.
"All children should be welcomed with joy and wonder, no matter the circumstances of their birth," she said. "Yet, too many of these sweet little ones are denied the medical care they need to survive and thrive simply because they were unwanted."
She was talking specifically about babies who survived attempted abortions.
"This commonsense legislation will require healthcare providers to administer the same level of care to the babies who survive abortions that they would to any other child born at the same gestational age," she said.
"I hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will, again, join me in supporting the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, as some did, as our chairman mentioned, when it passed the House in both 2015 and 2018 with bipartisan support."
Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida, a co-sponsor, spoke shortly after Wagner.
"Today, we are not talking about abortion. We are talking about children," said Cammack. "We are talking about children who have been born and are fighting to survive despite an abortion attempt. In some cases when a woman receives a late-term abortion, the baby can be born alive following the procedure.
"Federal law currently recognizes these babies as persons but fails to outline any requirements of care after the infant is born alive," said Cammack. "H.R. 26 would rectify this by requiring healthcare practitioners to treat any child born alive after an abortion as they would any infant and requires that the infant be immediately treated with lifesaving care and transported to a hospital.
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"I honestly do not understand what is so controversial about that," she said.
The House voted 220 to 210 that day in 2023 to approve the bill. But Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas was the only Democrat who voted for it.
Vice President Kamala Harris expressed outrage that the House had approved this bill to protect born babies who had survived abortions. That day, as reported by Fox News, she sent out a tweet that declared the legislation "extreme."
"House Republicans passed an extreme bill today that will further jeopardize the right to reproductive health care in our country," said Harris. "This is yet another attempt by Republican legislators to control women's bodies."
She said nothing about the body of the newborn baby.
Nor was this a new issue for Harris. This same bill had come up in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, when she was serving there.
On Feb. 25, 2019, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel brought the bill up for a cloture vote to end debate and bring the issue to a final substantive vote.
"In just a few hours, the Senate will vote on advancing a straightforward piece of legislation to protect newborn babies," McConnell said in a floor speech. "This legislation is simple. It would simply require that medical professionals give the same standard of care and medical treatment to newborn babies who have survived an attempted abortion as any other newborn baby would receive in any other circumstance."
"Whatever the circumstances, if that medical professional comes face-to-face with a baby who has been born alive, they are looking at a human being with human rights, period," said McConnell.
"Are we really supposed to think that it is normal that there are now two sides debating whether newborn, living babies deserve medical attention?" he said.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, spoke without ambiguity. "I rise today for a simple purpose," he said. "I want to ask each and every one of our colleagues whether we are OK with infanticide. This language is blunt. I recognize that, and it is too blunt for many people in this body, but, frankly, that is what we are talking about here today."
The bill needed 60 votes in favor of a "cloture motion" to end debate and move to a final substantive vote. It got 53, including three Democrats: Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama.
Then-Sen. Kamala Harris was one of 44 Democrats who voted to block the bill.
Exactly a year later -- on Feb. 25, 2020 -- it came up for another cloture vote. That time, it got 56 votes, with Casey, Manchin and Jones again joining Republicans in favor of cloture -- and Harris joining 40 other Democrats in voting to block it.
Harris has now picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her party's vice-presidential nominee. Walz also has a record on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
When Walz was serving in the House in 2018, then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee sponsored the bill. On Jan. 19 of that year, H.R. 4712 (as it was enumerated in that Congress) passed 241 to 183. Walz voted for it -- along with five other Democrats.
As has been reported before by Alpha News, he then declared his vote was an accident.
"Accidentally voted for HR4712 today," he said in a tweet. "It was an honest mistake. I meant to vote NO, as I did on an identical bill last Congress.
"My apologies for the confusion," Walz said. "I'll keep fighting for women's access to health care."
Unless, of course, they are a newborn.
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