News
Featured Image

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 28, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Following the U.S. Senate’s failed vote Monday to curb infanticide, several Democrats who opposed the measure refused to answer questions about the limits to their support of abortion-on-demand, including the two most popular official contenders for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

On Monday evening, the Senate voted 53-44 in favor of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would strengthen existing federal law by requiring abortionists to provide medical care for newborns who survive failed abortions. A simple majority was insufficient to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold, and the bill was not expected to make it through the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Only three Democrats – Doug Jones of Alabama, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia – crossed the aisle to vote “aye.” Every Democrat senator currently running for president – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – voted against it.

“Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children. The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth,” President Donald Trump responded. “This will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress. If there is one thing we should all agree on, it's protecting the lives of innocent babies.”

In the days following the vote, the Daily Caller caught up with several Democrat senators to ask them if there is ever a “point at which [abortion] would be considered immoral.”

“I think it’s up to a woman to make that decision, and I will always stand by that,” Harris responded. “I think she needs to make that decision with her doctor, with her priest, with her spouse. I would leave that decision up to them.” Sanders dodged the question by “sprinting down Senate escalators and into the Senate subway,” according to the Caller. Harris and Sanders are the two most popular of the declared primary candidates so far.

“I, nor frankly anyone in my caucus, is pro-abortion. But I think the decision when and under what circumstances to terminate a pregnancy is something best left to a woman, her doctor, and her minister or family,” answered Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware. “I don’t think infanticide is and was illegal, and I didn’t think the vote last night advanced that issue one bit.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who made national headlines last fall for suggesting Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t deserve a presumption of innocence because of his assumed pro-life views, refused to answer; instead a staffer shot back, “we don’t talk to you, I don’t know why you keep asking.” Despite supporting the infanticide bill, Jones (who campaigned as an abortion moderate but went on to support late-term abortion), stated he was “not going to answer abortion questions.”

Two of the respondents suggested openness to abortion restrictions, which is not reflected in their voting records.

Sen. Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut first claimed he would “have to think about that,” and eventually answered that abortion “might be” immoral “if it is performed with criminal intent. If there is criminal intent or, in fact, intent to harm another person.” It’s unclear what his answer means in practice; every successful abortion fatally harms another person. Blumenthal has 100 percent pro-abortion ratings with Planned Parenthood and NARAL.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate who once claimed to be pro-life, answered that he has “supported all kinds of regulations that I think are completely consistent with Roe v. Wade. So, yeah — many over the course of my career.” Yet he has drifted leftward alongside his party; he voted against the infanticide ban this week, and against a late-term abortion ban last year.

Every Democrat running for president so far has an uncompromising pro-abortion record.