Democratic Minority Leader Nails the Reason his Party Rejected Born-Alive Protection

The news of the pending vote for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act last week didn’t immediately earn my interest. I assumed, like many who are tired of the bi-partisan standoff in our government, federal and state, that the politicians loaded the bill with additional demands hidden beneath the distraction of the larger issue. When the bill failed to pass because not a single Democratic Senator voted for it, with only 1 voting for it in the House, I went to the liberal media to find out why. I wanted to know what else was in the bill that could account for this, besides group-think mentality and hardened hearts.

Bewilderment and curiosity overcame me when I couldn’t find a single mention about this issue on NPR or CNN. Something is not right if this victory for the flagship social cause of the left remained absent from their newsreels. So I dug into it. I read the bill (the link to it is below, if you’d like to read it), and I spent the last five days meditating on it. The bill is what it says it is. There are no other partisan issues attached to it. It says that a baby born alive must receive treatment and be rushed to the hospital, otherwise, a crime is committed and the guilty party could face up to 5 years in prison—and it adds that the mother could sue the abortion doctor, which, in our sue-crazed society, surprised me it even needed to be mentioned.

If a baby survives an abortion, and the life of the baby is now protected by legal rights, then how can they say the baby’s life was meaningless five minutes ago, when location was the only difference?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the defense given by Chuck Shumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, is the only logical explanation.

94% of abortions are performed in the first trimester, with less than 1% performed in the third trimester. It is the third trimester babies this bill considers (although some doctors would consider the last 2 weeks of the second trimester as potentially viable). But why would someone wait until the third trimester to make this decision? A danger to the life of the mother will be the first reason you receive whenever you ask. I am not a medical professional, but I can’t come up with a scenario where a full grown baby in the womb needs to be killed before coming out of the mother in order to save the mother’s life. With our medical knowledge and skills, C-sections and labor inducing drugs, it seems logical to me that an operation could save both lives, without having to sacrifice one. If you know what medical emergency requires the baby to be removed dead instead of alive to save the mother’s life, please tell me.

The other reasons for a third trimester abortion are:
- New information about the baby’s health became available
- Similar to the first point, results of false-negative findings during second trimester screenings
- Funds to have the abortion earlier were not available
- Travel to another state made the access to an earlier abortion difficult
- The pregnancy was not detected until the third trimester (it can happen)

The reason for most abortions, including third trimester abortions, is unwanted pregnancy. According to the Pew Research and the Guttmacher Institute, 85% to 87% of women who have abortions are unmarried. This is where I can chase the rabbit trail and talk about how we raise our children to embrace our sexualized and self-seeking culture instead of raising them in the word of God and teaching them love and self-sacrifice through His absolute and righteous truth, but the point of this blog post is to shed light on the accuracy of Chuck Shumer’s response to why the Democrats banned together, making it appear that not 1 Democrat believes a crying baby should be cared for, which we know is not true—it’s a banning together of the brotherhood, taking the individual out of our elected leaders.

Abortion, at its core, is tragic. It should be an unnecessary conversation, because if we cared more about truth, righteousness, mercy, love and other people, more than we cared about ourselves, the issue of abortion would be left to the decisions of doctors in emergency rooms. Each incident would be mourned for the tragedy it was, and we’d lift up our grief to God and put the care of that lost child into His hands.

This is what Chuck Shumer said when every Democrat in Congress, save 1, rejected this bill (not a direct quote):
This bill opens the door for the Republicans to attack the abortion industry on every level.

Even though he intended to give us the typical smokescreen on the issue, Chuck couldn’t have spoken a more truthful statement. Here’s why:

If a baby survives an abortion, and the life of the baby is now protected by legal rights, then how can they say the baby’s life was meaningless five minutes ago, when location was the only difference? It is the basis for the abortion argument—that it isn’t really a baby yet. It makes it an impossible case, other than saying what it is—nobody wants to deal with this baby. The reasons of diagnosed imperfections, or unacceptable financial strain, or the loss of a personal existence, all now take a backseat to life.

The reason Democrats linked arms and united to reject this bill, is because if we can make this argument at eight months into the pregnancy, then we can easily pass it down to six months, then to three months, and yes, on down to conception.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I need to remind you that Jesus was born in an unplanned pregnancy, one that offered, at a minimum, exile to Mary (remember, Joseph planned to put her away quietly), because the more realistic scenario for Mary was being stoned to death. As Christians, our stance on abortion can be only one-sided, that it is wrong regardless of the scenario it is packaged in, and God has given us His example in the birth of His Son.

I say this because I used to support the argument of a woman’s right to choose. It is only natural, to not want what you did not plan, to remove obstacles to the future you envisioned for yourself, to avoid gossip and speculation about yourself, etc. But it is natural to do a lot of things the Bible tells us are wrong. We aren’t to use drugs and alcohol to cope with life. We aren’t to be sexually wanton and are to save ourselves for marriage—very unnatural. We are to consider others, even to our own death, over ourselves.

As believers and, more importantly, followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to the unnatural. We are called to live in the Spirit. This means, as much as we’d like to, that we cannot pick and chose which biblical truths we are willing to follow because they are easier or more convenient.

What changed my mind about the abortion issue? It wasn’t because I read the Bible and found some verses that spoke against it. It wasn’t because someone presented a better argument for pro-life. The reason is that the Holy Spirit changed my heart and sensitized me to it. The Holy Spirit fills your heart will love and compassion and changes you from the inside out. Amen.

Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/6/text

Bible verses about abortion:
Psalm 10:8-9
Psalm 94:21
Psalm 127:3
Psalm 139:13-16
Hosea 4:1b-2
Proverbs 31:8
Jeremiah 1:5
Jeremiah 19:4-5
Jeremiah 20:17
Jeremiah 7:6
Jeremiah 2:33-35
Jeremiah 32:35
Luke 1:41
Matthew 1:18-21