The Abortion Debate Needs Moral Lament

We are in the postabortion-debate phase of the abortion debate. Earlier this week, Senator Ben Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was debated on the Senate floor, and failed to receive the 60 votes necessary for cloture. The bill was supported by all present Republicans and three Democrats: Senators Bob Casey, Doug Jones, and Joe Manchin. All other Senate Democrats opposed the legislation.

In the most literal sense, the debate is now postabortion because Sasse’s bill addresses what happens in the rare instances when the medical procedure is unsuccessful and a child is born alive. Additionally, Sasse and some Republican allies claimed vehemently that the bill had nothing to do with restricting abortion, and therefore should have been an easier sell for pro-choice Democrats. But, of course, this postabortion phase of the abortion debate is still very much about abortion, and it lays bare the distrust, offense, and callousness bred by abortion politics in the United States over the past 50 years.

T failed abortions is not a new one. In 2002, Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act by a voice vote. During his presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama was by accusations that in 2003 he opposed a similar bill in the Illinois state legislature. During the 2016 presidential debates, while Hillary Clinton of supporting the idea that in “the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother.” Clinton replied with a passionate case for ensuring the availability of abortions late in pregnancy.