Cortez Masto, Rosen vote for infanticide

If an abortionist — armed with scissors, clamps and a vacuum cleaner — can’t kill a baby while she’s still in the womb, he shouldn’t get another chance after she’s born. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen disagree.

Before he was engulfed in a blackface scandal, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam shocked the country by supporting infanticide when asked about an abortion bill. Northam said that if a child is born with severe deformities or is nonviable, the mother and her doctor should be able to decide what to do with that child.

But once a child is born, the abortion debate should be over. Even those who don’t believe a pre-born baby has the right to life should acknowledge that a living baby is a human being once she’s outside her mother’s womb.

On Monday, every senator had the chance to do exactly that by voting on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The bill would “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., proposed the measure in response to Northam’s infanticide comments.

This bill placed no limits on abortion. It merely required medical personnel “to preserve the life and health of a child” born alive after an abortion. That would prevent an abortionist — through action or neglect — from killing a newborn.

The babies in question are people such as Melissa Ohden, who survived a saline abortion in 1977. The medical staff thought she was dead when they delivered her. “But a nurse apparently heard me whimper, realized I wasn’t dead, and saved my life,” Ohden wrote.

Requiring medical care for newborn babies shouldn’t be controversial.

The bill needed 60 votes to break a Democratic filibuster. It got 53. Forty-four Democrats, including Cortez Masto, Rosen and every Senate Democrat running for president, voted against it.

“Senate Republican leaders brought a bill to the floor that does nothing short of attacking a woman’s protected right to make her own reproductive health decisions,” Cortez Masto wrote in a statement.

What an Orwellian spin on the indefensible. Think about what she’s saying. Requiring life-saving medical care for a newborn is an attack on a woman’s right to make her own reproductive health decisions. Not helping a newborn isn’t a reproductive health decision. It’s murder.

A vote like this can’t be justified on the merits, so the mainstream media will do their best to either downplay it or unquestioningly accept Democrat propaganda. Most in the media want to avoid this issue because it exposes Democrats as way out of sync with public sentiment. A new Marist poll finds that 80 percent of Americans support limiting abortion to the first three months of pregnancy.

“If it saves just one life” is a frequent Democratic talking point. That’s a dubious argument to justify universal background checks. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, however, would save the life of newborns such as Ohden.

Cortez Masto and Rosen voted no anyway. Shame on them.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.