The 'born alive' abortion myth
A harmful GOP policy not based on facts rears its head again in McCarthy's House
Earlier this month, Ann Wagner (R-MO), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Kat Cammack (R-FL) introduced the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act”.
The bill passed in the GOP-led House, but as many outlets including CNN reported, it is not expected to pass in the Senate.
The problem is, this is not how abortions occur and is intentionally misleading. Even if the bill’s passage in the House was “largely symbolic” as discussed by Newsweek and Kaiser Health News, it serves to drum up more support for the anti-abortion movement.
Planned Parenthood called the bill a “nothing contrived scare tactic,” with senior vice president of policy, organizing, and campaigns Jacqueline Ayers adding, "This bill is deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant people and the doctors and nurses who provide their care. It is yet another attempt by anti-abortion politicians to spread misinformation as a means to their warped political end: to ban safe and legal abortion."
To understand the harm such bills not based on facts or reality have, see here.
This is not the first time the GOP has tried to pass a “born alive” bill in the Senate. Following their failure to pass such legislation in 2019, then-President Trump remarked that the Democrats “don’t mind executing babies after birth.”
Trump’s track record for both lying and disregarding human life are well documented by now. By feigning care for innocent life in this way he is positioning himself as the hero and demonizing the left and those who get abortions. Save the children is a rallying cry of QAnon. It’s also textbook fascist politics - see “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them” by Jason Stanley. Such dramatic language gets the click-bait samples that spread across the far-right internet and media to keep their base enraged.
And it masks the risk that anti-abortion policy causes to the living.
It is high time we stop taking health policy advice from Trump or the GOP he has poisoned. Policy must be based on facts, not lies for an extremist ideology. This move by the GOP House signals their refusal to break with MAGA - or the Council for National Policy that delivered the Trump presidency, the overtaking of the Supreme Court and the fall of Roe.
