PHOENIX (LifeSiteNews) – Arizona’s Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed legislation to ensure basic medical care for infants who survive attempted abortions, with Republicans in the state legislature lacking the votes to override.
SB 1600 would have required “any infant who is born alive, including one born during the course of an abortion” to be “treated as a legal person” and given “the same rights to medically appropriate and reasonable care and treatment” as a child born in any other circumstance. Failures to comply would have been required to be reported to law enforcement, and violations grounds for suspension or revocation of medical licenses.
In her veto message, Hobbs claimed the bill was “uniformly opposed by the medical community, and interferes with the relationship between a patient and doctor. It’s simply not the state’s role to make such difficult medical decisions for patients.”
“Governor Hobbs played coy during her campaign but now her radical views are on full display; she just gave the okay to infanticide,” Center for Arizona Policy president Cathi Herrod responded. “Governor Hobbs has just shown her true colors; she is more devoted to her political special interest groups than she is to serving all Arizonans, even the most vulnerable and needy.”
Abortion defenders have attempted to discredit born-alive protections by claiming that infanticide is a myth, and that existing laws already suffice to deter it. But several former abortion industry insiders and policy scholars have told Congress or admitted under oath that it still happens, and that many cases of infanticide are not captured by official numbers. Further, existing federal laws on the subject do not contain specific criminal penalties for withholding medical treatment from newborns.
“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,” according to the Abortion Survivors Network. “In other words, about 2 out of every 1,000 abortions result in a live birth. After 49.5 years of Roe v Wade, 85,817 babies lived through an abortion procedure.”
Hobbs’s veto of anti-infanticide protection is the latest consequence of Democrats gaining control of the Arizona governor’s mansion. Past left-wing actions include vetoing legislation to keep critical race theory out of public schools and strengthen protection against vaccine mandates, proposing to defund a pro-life center for homeless pregnant women and redirect it to the abortion industry, and issuing an executive order requiring state agencies and government contractors to ignore “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as factors for employment decisions, even if relevant to contractors such as religious foster centers.