Fox News "The Story with Martha MacCallum" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Tim Scott

Interview

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MACCALLUM: This is just an absolutely horrific story. And I just want to remind people of your passion on this issue and show them a bit of a floor speech that you gave a while back. Watch this.

SCOTT: Yes ma'am.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT: We are a nation that must continue to value life. This is common sense, this is human decency. This is not an issue of being pro-life or pro-choice. This is being pro-child which we all should be.

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MACCALLUM: Senator, what prompted that speech that day that what was going on, on the Hill?

SCOTT: I was just so frustrated that we were actually having to debate any issue about infanticide. The fact to the matter is that the United States of America, the country built on compassion, should not be ever in a debate about whether or not a child born and separated from his or her mother should be killed by the doctor.

And to have a doctor who happens to be the governor of Virginia suggest that perhaps, infanticide, somehow some ways to be legal, just -- it hurt my heart and it frustrated me. And as a legislator, I felt my responsibility was to speak out loud and clear that we are not talking about pro-choice or pro-life, we're talking about being pro-child.

And to think about the discovery just the last 72 hours or so, it's devastating. It's indefensible. And in many corridors of this country, especially on the left, the silence is deafening, it's sickening.

MACCALLUM: There was -- you know, update everybody on the status of what you were also advocating for which was the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act. What happened with that?

SCOTT: Well, it's got stuck. We can't have -- we can't get 60 votes in the United States Senate to move that bill forward. Ben Sasse, the leading sponsor of that bill along with myself, other co-sponsors, we've been pushing this envelope. And we're going to continue to push it because here again, Martha, is this just common sense, this is common decency. It's not a -- it's not an issue in the gray. This is a black and white issue and we should all be on the side of life.

This is a chance for every single person in this legislative body to be pro-child without talking about politics. We're talking about a child born, separated from his or her mother.

MACCALLUM: Yes.

SCOTT: And whether we should let that child live.

MACCALLUM: In related, but other news, because I know, as you just said, you want to separate this from the pro-life, pro-choice question. This is -- it is, is after a child is, is feasible and born. However, there's a new study out. And this is a headline from The New York Times that says, that, "America's abortion rate has dropped to its lowest rate ever." And, "New research suggests that contraception and fewer pregnancies may be more responsible for the decline than state laws that are restricting abortion."

And they go in this piece, you know, to back that up with a number of facts related to states that have and adopted stricter laws. And the fact that actually in those days, they've actually seen the abortion numbers rise a little bit. What do you think about that?

SCOTT: Well, I think, people who are providing information will take the facts, and perhaps, hide the truth behind the facts. Here is what we know, in 2011, we had over a million abortions. The fact that we've had 938,000 is still 938,000 kids who will never walk on this earth.

So, I don't want to dive into whether we should celebrate or not celebrate a small reduction. Certainly, we should be thankful that we have fewer abortions today than we had in 2011.

But here is the question. The question is simply this. Because of science, our friends on the left want to talk about science in the environment. Here is what we know from a scientific perspective on life. At 20 weeks, we know the child fear -- feels pain. Why not get your country together on the left and the right and say, we'll take science, and we'll say, at 20 weeks, we cannot have any abortions beyond that point.

Why not have confidence that every year, we will see that number of weeks move back and back? I'm a believer that we should defend and protect life at conception. I am willing to have a fight on that issue. But there are things that we can't fight about. We can't fight about infanticide. It's just not possible to have a logical reasonable conversation on that topic.

But we should not be talking about allowing late-term abortions as we're having that discussion on the left today.

MACCALLUM: Understood.

SCOTT: There are like seven countries on earth that allow for abortions in the late-term.

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM: Yes, we are in a rare company on that one.

SCOTT: (INAUDIBLE) company, actually.

MACCALLUM: Senator, thank you very much. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

SCOTT: Thank you, Martha.

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