Born-Alive Abortion Surviviors Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, God bless the United States Supreme Court
for its Roe v. Wade decision that liberated the women of this country
to make their own decisions, to exercise their own consciences in the
most intensely private matter of whether they should carry a pregnancy
to term.

Now, I recognize, of course, that there are those who hold the
religious conviction that a one-celled organism--one cell, two cells--
is a fully formed human being.

They are entitled to religious conviction. They are not entitled to
impose that religious conviction on all the women of this country who
may not share it. That is essentially the abortion debate.
We are not debating abortion today, although some people would like
to. We are debating this ridiculous Born-Alive Survivors Protection
Act.

Fifteen years ago, I stood on this floor and supported the Born-Alive
Infants Protection Act. I said it was unnecessary. It simply repeated
existing law.

It has always been the law that, if an infant is born, whether that
birth was intentional or not is irrelevant, that that is a person.
If you kill that infant, you are guilty of murder or manslaughter,
as the case may be. You certainly may not do so intentionally.

The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act did not change that. It just
added superfluous language to the law. Its only purpose was to try to
paint people who support the right to choose and supporters of
infanticide.

So we said, no, it is silly because it doesn't add anything to the
law. It simply duplicates the existing law, but we will support it so
we cannot be slandered that way.

Now we have this bill, which does essentially two things. One, it
repeats, in different language, exactly the same provisions from 15
years ago.

It doesn't change the law that we enacted 15 years ago, and it
doesn't change the law that preexisted in every State of the Union. If
you kill a child, it is murder, period.

Dr. Gosnell, I would point out, is in jail for life because he
committed multiple murders. Nobody, but nobody, supports what he does
and nobody, except in some of their fantasies that Mr. Franks says,
thinks that Planned Parenthood or anybody else supports such actions.

This bill, however, cannot be supported because it does one harmful
thing. This bill says that the born-alive child must be given the same
standard of care whether he is born alive in an attempted abortion or
from a regular birth.

That is already the law. Of course, it is the law. It ought to be the
law. It must be the law. It always has been the law.

What it also does is it says that, as soon as the doctor has given
that child the proper standard of care, he must rush him to the
hospital, regardless of whether that might be good or bad for the
child, regardless of the standard of care, regardless of whether the
nearby hospital has neonatal intensive care units.

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Mr. NADLER. Of course, everybody associated with the doctor, under
existing law, has the duty of giving the best possible medical care
under any circumstances. That may be to transport the baby to the
hospital. It may be that the baby is too frail to transport.

But along comes this bill that says: We don't care about the real
situation that doctor faces with that infant. We know how to practice
medicine in every situation--we, in Congress--so we are going to say it
must be brought to the hospital even if that might kill the child.

It is just stupid, and that is why this bill must be opposed, not
because it changes the standard of law or has anything to do with born-
alive infants, but because it mandates that a child be brought to the
hospital when medical care might indicate that that child in that
situation should not be brought to the hospital. It may kill children.
That is why we must oppose this bill.

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