The retort is that perfectly healthy babies are already protected under law.
Text for H.R.2175 - 107th Congress (2001-2002): Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002
www.congress.gov
Republicans and Democrats traded accusations on the topic of abortion after a “born-alive” bill failed in the Senate. Democrats say the legislation was unnecessary and aimed at restricting access to legal abortion, while Republicans say it was about protecting babies. We’ll go through what the...
www.factcheck.org
In 2002, the “
Born-Alive Infants Protection Act”
easily passed Congress — through a voice vote in the House and unanimous consent in the Senate. It became law on Aug. 5, 2002. It defined a “person” (or “human being,” “child” and “individual”) for the purposes of any act of Congress or any agency ruling/regulation as “every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.“
The act went on to define “born alive” as: “the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.”
Are either of these laws necessary to prosecute the intentional killing of a baby as a homicide?
No. Killing a baby is a homicide. “States can and do punish people for killing children who are born alive,”
Mary Ziegler, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Law and the author of two books on the abortion debate, told us in a phone interview. “Most criminal laws are at the state level not the federal level.”
Ziegler said Sasse’s bill would add uniform federal criminal penalties for health care practitioners, so it does include new measures. “It’s more just of questionable importance given that state law prosecutions are already happening.”
In 2013, for instance, Kermit Gosnell
was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of three babies born alive in his Philadelphia abortion clinic and one count of involuntary manslaughter for the death of a woman whom he treated.