NEWSWEEK – A number of abortion-rights groups have criticized the GOP after House Republicans pushed through a bill requiring an infant born during or after an attempted abortion to receive medical care.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act passed in a House 220-210 vote on Wednesday, with Texas’ Henry Cuellar the only Democrat to support the measure.
The bill would require all health providers to give the same level of care to a baby born alive during or after an attempted abortion as to any other child born prematurely. That would include being taken to the hospital.
The bill, introduced by Kat Cammack (R-Fla), Ann Wagner (R-MO) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, would also see a health care practitioner who fails to provide the required degree of care to a infant born after an abortion attempt face up to five years in prison.
The bill wouldn’t impose any penalties on the mother of an infant who was born after the procedure fails.
The passing of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is largely symbolic, seeing as it will fail to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate, as almost identical bills have done in the past.
The bill is also the first anti-abortion legislation that has cleared the now GOP-controlled House since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
NARAL Pro-Choice America said the bill would “allow politicians to interfere” in personal family decisions.
“Once again, Democrats are fighting for our reproductive freedom and the 8 in 10 Americans who support the legal right to abortion, while Republicans are doubling down on their anti-choice extremist values,” Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement … read more.
