THE BORN ULTIMATUM

The Born Ultimatum

February 21, 2019 - FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL

In four days, the U.S. Senate will take one of the most defining votes in its 230-year history. 

One hundred men and women, from different backgrounds and different parties, will decide where America stands: with the innocent or with infanticide.

It’s not complicated. Or at least it didn’t used to be. 

But now that the Democratic party has chained its wagon to the darkest recesses of the abortion lobby, nothing is off the table. Including the legalized killing of a perfectly healthy newborn. 

Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and company have tried to justify it – insisting a fully-born child is not a baby, it’s a “personal decision.” 

And leaving it to die – or helping death along -- is just a subset of “women’s rights & health.”

We’ll never know how many children have been sent to hospital utility rooms, snipped in the neck, or beaten on the side of the head by abortionists. 

What we do know is that this evil happens. And anyone who stands on the side of it will have to answer for it one day. 

“Defending newborns shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not there’s an (R) or a (D) after your name,” Senator Ben Sasse (R) wrote from Nebraska. “As a Democrat in an older mode, former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, used to say: 

This isn’t ‘Right v. Left, but right versus wrong.’ …Every Nebraskan, every member of Congress and every American, should be able to affirm that all of us are created equal -- even the tiniest.”

While senators spend their last few days at home, the abortion debate that hangs over the country is playing out there too. 

From one coast to the other, states are shoving other issues to the backburner so they can register where they stand on the greatest human rights crisis since 1973. 

In some states, like Vermont, the response has been a stubborn defense of a gruesome practice 77 percent of the country opposes. 

While voters pack out hearing rooms and hold rallies, the Green Mountain State is plowing ahead with a New York-style law that legitimizes killing a perfectly healthy baby seconds from away birth.

“This is legal, that we trust women with their choices, and those decisions are very personal and need to be made in concert with their health care provider,” said House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D) during a press event Wednesday. 

Republicans fiercely disagreed, fighting with amendment after amendment to stop the Left from hurting its most vulnerable. 

For hours, conservatives fought back, trying to introduce language on anything pro-life -- parental notification, pain-capable bans, abortion clinic safety standards and state inspections, and mandatory ultrasounds – all to no avail. 

By nightfall, the Vermont House voted 104-40 to follow down New York’s dark path. Now, Rep. Carl Rosenquist (R) said somberly, “the most unrepresented person or thing in the world, or here in Vermont anyway, is a viable [baby] that has not yet been born.”

Out in Arizona, the mood – once abject shock at the Democrats’ agenda – turned joyous, as one woman’s horrible attempt to erase the state’s resuscitation law for abortion survivors lost. 

Days earlier, State Rep. Raquel Terán (D) had taken Democrats to a place no state had gone when she tried to repeal the infanticide ban on the books. 

Across the country, people were appalled at how tone-deaf Arizona could be in the aftermath of New York.

“Babies surviving an abortion deserve an Arizona law that protects their freedom to live,” said our friend Cathi Herrod, president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy. 

Outraged at the idea that their state would intentionally undo the life-saving measures they’d put in place, “more than 300 opponents filled the hearing and watched from two overflow rooms and the House gallery.”

Terán’s bill, HB 2696, would have wiped away the 1975 law that orders doctors to use all “available means and medical skills” to save the baby. 

But in the middle of the proceedings, Terán said she made a mistake filing the bill. 

“She said she intended only to repeal a 2017 law that broadened the 1975 measure and blamed a drafting error for the situation. 

As debate on the bill began, Terán repeatedly pleaded with the committee's chairman, Rep. John Allen, R-Scottsdale, to withdraw it from debate,” reported Arizona Central.

He didn’t, insisting that this was a teachable moment. 

“Allen said he forced debate on Terán's bill, knowing she made a drafting error, to show what lawmakers passed in 2017 was ‘good law.’” 

In the end, legislators agreed, sending Terán’s bill down in flames – without a single vote in favor. 

“The responsibility for this mistake is mine & I have apologized to all involved for not reading it closer to ensure that my intent was clear,” she tweeted. 

Unfortunately, her intent was clear enough as it was. 

Let’s hope, Cathi wrote, “[L]awmakers who thought it was a good idea to repeal lifesaving measure for babies who survive abortions got a lesson in Arizona values.”

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Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.