by WorldTribune Staff, June 6, 2019
North Carolina Democrats were in a celebratory mood after they successfully staved off an effort by Republicans to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the GOP-led State Assembly’s born alive abortion legislation.
The legislation would have required medical professionals to care for newborns who survive an abortion and grant them the same protections as other patients instead of allowing them to die after the unsuccessful procedure. Those who refused to comply could have faced prison time and up to $250,000 in fines.
The state House and Senate, both with Republican majorities, approved the measure before Cooper vetoed it. The Senate voted to override the veto last month.
The state House on June 5 voted 67-53 to override the veto — but fell short of the 72 votes needed. Only one Democrat joined all Republicans in the failed vote to override the veto.
Republicans lost their veto-proof majority in the NC House in the 2018 midterm elections.
State Sen. Natasha Marcus tweeted a photo of grinning Democrats, writing: “My fellow first term Senators and I are in the House Chamber right now to witness the House sustain the Governor’s veto of a bill meant to undermine Roe v Wade and criminalize doctors.”
A North Carolina-based columnist for RedState responded, tweeting: “Pro-abortion Democratic state senators in North Carolina smile & celebrate over their belief that a veto by our Dem gov of a pro-life bill meant to protect babies born alive from botched abortions will fail to be overridden. Let that sink in. Absolute ghouls.”
Another Twitter user said the four Democrats in the photo will “be known in the 2020 campaigns” as “The Infanticide Four.”
In his veto of the bill, Cooper claimed that laws already exist to protect babies after they are born.
Sponsors of the bill assert that state law provides a loophole for doctors who allow newborn babies to die after a failed abortion through purposeful negligence, and that the bill would have addressed that loophole.
“This bill is nothing except requiring care for a newborn child, separate from its mother, born alive,” said state Sen. Joyce Krawiec, a Republican who sponsored the bill.
The North Carolina Values Coalition said that five states reported at least 25 children were born alive during attempted abortions in 2017, and while North Carolina does not maintain those sort of statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 140 infant deaths nationwide involved induced terminations from 2003 to 2014, The Washington Times reported.
Live Action president Lila Rose also issued a statement indicating that video evidence contradicts claims that “born-alive” bills are unnecessary:
“Live Action has documented on camera how abortionists in our country’s notorious late-term abortion facilities talk about survivors of abortion. Washington, D.C. abortionist Cesare Santangelo told our undercover investigators that he would make sure babies ‘do not survive’ if they were born alive at his facility. A New York abortion worker told our Live Action investigator to ‘flush’ the baby down the toilet or ‘put it in a bag’ if she’s born alive. In Arizona, an abortion worker told us there ‘may be movement’ after the baby is outside of the mother and that they would refuse to provide help and instead let her die. Dr. DeShawn Taylor, former medical director for Planned Parenthood, told a Center for Medical Progress investigator that identifying ‘signs of life’ after a baby survives an abortion is contingent upon ‘who’s in the room.’ ”
North Carolina state Rep. Pat McElraft testified on the need for the “born-alive” legislation by recounting her own experiences as a phlebotomist.
“I was on a break and went in to visit with the pathologist in the pathology lab and I asked him, I said, ‘What are all these little pigs doing in these buckets?’ He told me, ‘Pat, look again,’ and I did. They were perfectly formed little human babies in those buckets,” she said.
She added that she knew of a doctor at the hospital who drowned newborns who had survived abortions.
Kelsea McLain, community outreach director for the Women’s Choice abortion care provider in the Raleigh area, said the bill was part of a nationwide trend to criminalize abortion.
“We’re just here to make sure folks know that this a bad bill, it’s not a bill based in a need, it’s a bill based in stigma and not science,” McLain told the Raleigh News & Observer, adding that the legislation is “rooted on the idea that abortion is inherently bad and the providers of that care are bad people, when it’s really not the reality that we’re up against.”
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