Limited right; basic decency
Abortion should stay legal, safe and rare
Some things should not be hard. If there is any norm our elected senators and representatives should be able to agree upon it is that infanticide should be illegal.
Passing the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act introduced by Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) should be beyond debate or dispute.
But Democrats in the Senate have already acted to block a vote on the bill.
If that is the final answer — that Congress cannot limit the right to abortion, even for a baby that somehow survives an abortion procedure — then our nation will be a less compassionate society than it wants to be and than it is today.
Mr. Sasse’s bill does not limit the right to an abortion. It limits the extent to which this right can be exercised, which is what the Supreme Court did when it made abortion legal for the nation.
The Court limited the federal legality of abortion to the stage of pre-viability. After the fetus is viable as a life, abortion is not legal. Mr. Sasse’s bill is simply a commonsense application of what is now the rule.
Mr. Sasse’s bill would require medical care for a baby alive after an abortion procedure. It requires that the child be cared for and transported to a hospital for further care. Democrats claim that the law already protects such infants. If that is the case, why not affirm it?
In New York, a new law legalizes abortion after 24 weeks in cases where it would protect a woman’s health (including mental health) or where a fetus is not viable. State law previously allowed abortions after 24 weeks only if the woman’s life was in jeopardy.
Legislation was recently advanced in Virginia to repeal the ban on abortion in the third trimester if birth would harm a woman’s mental health. The sponsor of the bill opined that the law would allow an abortion right up until the moment that a baby is born, if a doctor agreed with it.
We have an uncomfortable, rather unsatisfactory (especially to “pro-choice” and “pro-life advocates”) compromise on abortion in this country: It is legal in the first trimester, before viability. Mr. Sasse is reaffirming the current cultural and legal norm.
Compromise solutions are seldom fully satisfactory to all. But partial-birth abortion, late-term abortion, abortion of a baby that has come to term, or of one that survived an attempted abortion, are all anathema to most Americans. No less a liberal Democrat than Daniel Patrick Moynihan found them barbarous and appalling.
These things are also unnecessary in the era of the morning after pill and almost instant pregnancy tests. Indeed, that is why abortion is in steep decline.
Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be legal, safe and rare. That’s where most of the country is on the issue. Agreeing to ban a form of infanticide will not limit the rights of women and is not too much to ask of a society that seeks to be decent and civilized.