Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, today we will vote on two pro-life bills: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

These bills should be completely uncontroversial. Every one of us in this Chamber ought to be able to agree that infants who are born alive during an abortion procedure should receive the same care that a baby born alive in a hospital would receive.

Every one of us ought to agree that, at the very least, we should not be aborting babies after the point that they can feel pain, but unfortunately the abortion extremism in the Democratic Party is such that it is unlikely that these two bills will even get a chance to be debated.

We shouldn't even need the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. It should be obvious that any baby born alive, wherever he or she is born, ought to receive care, but with more than one leading Democrat over the past year refusing to rule out infanticide, it has become clear that we need to underscore that being born alive in an abortion clinic instead of a hospital doesn't eliminate a baby's right to medical care.

Like the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the Pain- Capable Unborn Child Protection Act should be a no-brainer. This legislation would ban abortions beginning in the sixth month of pregnancy, a point at which science has clearly demonstrated that the unborn child is able to feel pain--and not only able to feel pain. By this point in a pregnancy, approximately 20 weeks, babies are almost able to survive outside of their mothers. Babies have survived after being born at 25 weeks, at 24 weeks, at 23 weeks, and, like Ellie Schneider, who attended the State of the Union Address with her mom, at 21 weeks.

It is unthinkable that we are killing babies who are so far advanced that it is possible for them to survive outside of their mothers, but we are. In 2016, somewhere around 11,000 babies were aborted at or after the 21-week mark in pregnancy--11,000 in one year.

Democrats like to point to European countries to support their push for government-run healthcare and other socialist policies, but they never mention--they never mention--that almost every European country has more limits on abortion than we have here in the United States. In fact, the United States is one of just seven countries in the entire world that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Among the other countries are China and North Korea--not exactly the kind of company we want to be in when it comes to keeping and protecting human rights because--make no mistake--that is what we are talking about with abortion: human rights.

Abortion denies unique, individual human beings, with their own fingerprints and their own DNA, the most basic of human rights: the right to life. It is happening on a massive scale. Every year, in the United States alone, hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable human beings are killed by abortion. That is not some number that the pro- life movement has cooked up. That is straight. That is straight from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, formerly affiliated with Planned Parenthood, which reports, ``Approximately 862,320 abortions were performed in 2017''--862,320. Most of us can't even fathom a number that big.

To put it in perspective, 862,000 is roughly equivalent to the population of the entire State of South Dakota, my home State. That is right. Think about that. In 2017 alone, the number of babies killed by abortion was roughly equivalent to the population of the entire State of South Dakota.

We can do better. Americans are better than this. Our country was founded to safeguard human rights, not to take them away. While we haven't always lived up to that promise, we have never stopped trying. It is time for us, as a country, to stand up and to start protecting the rights of unborn human beings. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act will not stop all, or even most, abortions, but they are an important step, a chance for us, as Americans, to draw a line in the sand and to start standing up for the rights of babies who are able or nearly able to survive outside of their mothers. It is time for us to join the vast majority of the global community in prohibiting elective abortions past 20 weeks. It is time for us to make it clear that, no matter what some extreme Democrats may say, Americans believe that all children, whether born alive in a hospital or in an abortion clinic, deserve protection and basic medical care.

I hope my colleagues across the aisle will take a stand for human rights and for human decency and allow debate to move forward on these two important pro-life bills.

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