Pro-life advocates are watchful after back-to-back decisions on abortion restrictions emerged from Washington in late February.
On Feb. 24 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final regulation that bars the use of Title X money “to perform, promote, refer for or support abortion as a method of family planning.”
The Protect Life Rule, as it is being labeled, would reduce the amount of government money received by Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, which combined performed more than 332,757 abortions in the most recent year for which statistics are available.
Protection act
On Feb. 25 the U.S. Senate voted to block consideration of a measure that would punish any doctor who fails to provide medical care to a child born alive after an attempted abortion.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would require a health care practitioner to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child” as he or she would to “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
The bill includes criminal penalties, a right of civil action for an affected mother and a mandatory reporting requirement for other health providers.
Alabama Sen. Doug Jones was one of three Democrats who voted with Republicans to bring the bill to a vote, but the measure did not get the necessary votes to proceed.
Supporters of the bill say new state-level legislation removing barriers to late-term abortions necessitate federal action.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), the bill’s author, has described it as an “infanticide ban” that aims to protect innocent newborns. (TAB, BP)
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