Fifty-two years ago today, Roe v. Wade was decided by the United States Supreme Court.
Approximately one year before that, I was a member of the Iowa legislature.
That legislature attempted to appeal Iowa’s law, of decades old.
That vote in the House of Representatives was 44-44, so obviously that bill was not adopted, and our ban on abortion continued for a year until Roe v. Wade.
I was one of those 44 that voted to retain the law that’d been on the books for a long period of time.
There’s been a lot of history since then, and we’re still fighting this issue.
This bill before the United States Senate, now, is a very important bill to express what life in the womb is all about.
Dr. Willard Cates, the director of abortion surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981, referred to the survival of a baby after an attempted abortion as “the dreaded complication.”
Now I happen to call that “dreaded complication” a miracle.
While it may be a troubling truth for some people, there are babies who survive attempted abortions.
In 2024, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology analyzed almost 14,000 late-term abortions and found over 11 percent resulted in live births.
However, because we lack reliable federal and state abortion data, we don’t know the number of babies who survive an attempted abortion and are born alive each year in the U.S.
When an abortion results in the live birth of a child, that child should be entitled to quality health care under the law.
Tragically, that isn’t always the case.
During my time in Congress, I’ve heard a number of stories from abortion survivors regarding their health struggles and the lack of care they received following failed abortions.
Melissa Ohden, for example, was born alive in 1977 and left to die in a bucket of formaldehyde in a utility closet before being saved by two nurses.
She’s an advocate for children who come into this world the same way she did.
Her message for moms considering abortion is this, “There is hope for you and your child, even after an attempted abortion. You aren’t alone.”
While children born alive are already recognized as persons under the law, there is not a federal law on the books to penalize abortionists who actively kill or passively deny care to babies who survive abortions.
These precious babies deserve justice.
That’s why I’ve joined my colleagues in introducing the legislation we entitled, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivor’s Protection Act.
This legislation requires any child born alive following an attempted abortion receive the same level of care as any other newborn who was born alive at the same stage of development.
It doesn’t, and should not, matter if a child is born in a hospital, a maternity ward or in an abortion clinic.
In either case, this is a baby, and that reality ought to convict each of us, in our hearts, and move us to compassion and to action.
Our bill would bring justice for babies who survive abortions and are born into this world.
Under our current legal system, human lives viewed as unwanted are treated as dispensable.
No matter what each of us may think about abortion, we must speak and vote with unity to protect children outside the womb.
In Congress, my colleagues and I have reached across the aisle to protect children in many other contexts.
I ask my colleagues to do the same here.
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