By Laura Echevarria, Director of Communications and Press Secretary
During Monday’s televised Senate debate between pro-life Republican Tester, Tim Sheehy correctly asserted: Tim Sheehy and pro-abortion Democratic Senator Jon Tester
Elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth. Healthy, 9-month…old baby killed at the moment of birth. That’s what Jon Tester and the Democrats have voted for.
However, in a “fact check” by PolitiFact and republished by KFF Health News, the reporter wrote:
In a televised debate June 8, Sheehy accused Tester and Democrats of voting for “elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth.” That statement prompted Tester to respond: “To say we’re killing babies at 40 weeks is total BS.”
The same article also quoted false claims about the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
THE WOMEN’S HEALTH PROTECTION ACT AND ABORTIONS LATE IN PREGNANCY
Democrats in Congress once again introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), described by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights as “federal legislation that creates a new legal protection for the right to provide and access abortion care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions and bans on abortion.”
In 1973, the Supreme Court generally “federalized” abortion policy in its rulings in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Those rulings effectively prohibited states from placing any value at all on the lives of unborn children, in the abortion context, until the point that a baby could survive independently of the mother (“viability”). Moreover, these original rulings effectively negated state authority to protect unborn children after “viability.”
Contrary to widely held belief, abortions late in pregnancy are not illegal in the United States. Due to the interpretation of “all factors” to include the broad health reasons established in Doe v. Bolton, a life-threatening condition is not required for a woman to obtain a third-trimester abortion.
In Doe v. Bolton, which was not reversed under Dobbs, the Court held that
medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.
The WHPA is not new. First introduced in 2013, the legislation was not designed to “codify Roe v. Wade,” as some claim. The WHPA goes beyond Roe and would prevent any protective legislation from being passed in states, even those previously upheld by the Supreme Court while Roe was in effect. (This includes informed consent, parental notification laws, laws requiring an ultrasound before an abortion, etc.).
Even proponents of the legislation acknowledge its scope. The pro-abortion National Women’s Law Center acknowledges,
WHPA creates a federal statutory right for health care providers to provide abortion care, and a corresponding right for patients to receive that care without medically unnecessary bans, restrictions, or limitations that treat abortion differently from other medical care.
This would include any limitations on abortions after viability.
The “fact-checker” also claimed that abortions after viability are rare and only performed in cases of fetal abnormality or if the mother’s health is in danger. A simple check of the facts would have shown these assertions to be false. National Right to Life released a report called Checking the Fact Checkers: Abortions Until Birth which addresses abortions late in pregnancy and the reasons they are often performed using information that is readily available.
BORN-ALIVE ABORTION SURVIVORS PROTECTION ACT
Another issue in the article concerned babies born alive after abortions. The fact-checker asserted that this is rare. But there are problems with this claim. First, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) passively collects abortion data, and many states have no reporting requirements. Second, there is no standardized way that data about abortion survivors is collected and classified. Third, some states, including the nation’s largest, California, do not report any abortion data to the CDC.
It is false to claim that because records do not exist, survivors do not exist. In fact, there are over 700 known survivors of abortions.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was introduced to provide criminal penalties in instances where a child is born alive following an abortion and a provider fails to provide medical care. From the legislation:
… a health care practitioner who is present must exercise the same degree of care as would reasonably be provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age, and ensure the child is immediately admitted to a hospital.
According to the Abortion Survivors Network, which connects abortion survivors to resources,
Although the United States fails to record reliable data on abortion survivors, we have estimated, through Canadian government extrapolations, that 1,734 infants are born alive after a failed abortion procedure every year in the United States.
By these estimates, this would equal 2 out of every 1,000 abortions.
In addition, Democrats have made no secret of their support of unlimited abortion. Direct quotes from members of Congress, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other key Democrats can be found at here.
Once again, reporters and “fact checkers” played fast and loose with the facts and failed at their primary job which is to present information to readers and viewers with as little commentary and bias as possible.