SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Patty Murray lone senator to block ban on killing babies after birth

Feb 5, 2019, 2:08 PM | Updated: 7:45 pm

Patty Murray...

(Matt Pitman, KIRO Radio)

(Matt Pitman, KIRO Radio)

We are seeing a very troubling trend nationally with abortion, and I correctly predicted that it would come to Washington state. Thanks to State Sen. Patty Murray, Washington is in the middle of all of this.

It has become the priority of Democrats to advocate for an abortion right up until the moment of birth.

In Virginia, the proposed abortion legislation applies to a mother who is in labor. If one doctor says that the mom would be mentally impaired — not irreparably, it could be anxiety or depression — they could kill the baby as the mom is in labor.

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You can believe that life begins at conception or at fetal viability — both are reasonable arguments. So I would have thought that most people, both pro-life and pro-choice, would be horrified at the thought of killing a baby minutes before birth. But instead of being horrified, some Democrats are celebrating.

Last week in New York, they lit up One World Trade Center in pink to celebrate New York’s abortion bill.

Now we have the most radical legislation of all being considered in Vermont, legislation that goes much further than what has been done in New York and proposed in Virginia.  According to the Vermont legislation, if the mom decides at any point in the pregnancy that she wants an abortion, she can get one. She doesn’t have to have a doctor say that it is necessary.

In Virginia, the governor — who is facing backlash for a photo in blackface — last week said that according to his state’s proposed legislation, if a baby is born alive after a failed abortion minutes before birth, then the mom and doctor can talk about just letting it die. So now they crossed the line into infanticide.

What does all this have to do with Washington? Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse introduced a bill that he thought everyone, regardless of political affiliation, would go for. The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act says that if the abortion doesn’t work for some reason and the baby is born alive, doctors will do everything they can to take care of the baby and keep it alive.

We’re not going to join North Korea as the only country where infanticide is allowed.

What the senator wanted was a unanimous consent decree, where everyone in the Senate says yes. Yes, we will not allow a living baby to die after birth. But it was not unanimous because of one vote. Why?

It was Washington Senator Patty Murray who was the lone voice to step in and stop that bill.

We’re not even talking about late-term abortions — this bill would protect any babies born alive after an attempted abortion. And Patty Murray was the only one to oppose the bill.

I never dreamed I would talk about abortion as much as I have recently — more in the last few days than in my entire 24-year career — because I never dreamed we would get to a point where the Left is so radical that we’re talking about killing live babies after birth.

This goes beyond being pro-choice. It used to be that pro-choice people called for abortions to be “safe, legal, and rare.” That was what politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama said about abortions.

Now in 2019, we have a bill that says doctors have to provide medical care to any baby born alive, and Patty Murray says no. How is that happening? How is that considered acceptable?

In New York state, where the skies were lit up to celebrate the legalization of abortions minutes before birth, legislators introduced a bill to ban raising geese for fois gras because of animal cruelty. Killing a baby two minutes before birth is allowed, but we’d better protect geese from being fattened and killed.

This is a time I never thought I would see in this country.

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Patty Murray lone senator to block ban on killing babies after birth