EXCLUSIVE: GOP Lawmakers Introduce Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

Republican lawmakers are again introducing legislation to protect babies born alive in botched abortions, The Daily Wire can first report.

Led by Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, lawmakers will introduce the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act” on Thursday. The legislation would “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.”

It’s a piece of legislation that Republicans have introduced repeatedly in the past, arguing that it is both common sense to support it and inhumane to vote against it. Yet every year, Democrats vote against the protections for born-alive babies, arguing that the legislation is a secret attempt to restrict women’s access to so-called reproductive healthcare.

“No child should be denied medical care simply because they are ‘unwanted,’” Lankford told The Daily Wire. “Today, if an abortion procedure fails and a child is born alive, doctors can just ignore the crying baby on the table and watch them slowly die of neglect.”

“That’s not an abortion,” he added, “that’s infanticide.”

The Oklahoma senator is joined by 38 of his Republican colleagues, including Jim Banks of Indiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa,  Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah. The legislation is also backed by a host of conservative organizations, including Concerned Women for America, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and more.

Protections for unborn babies, limits on abortion, and federal abortion legislation are controversial topics within the Republican Party at the moment. But protections for born-alive babies have strong support from most, if not all, Republican lawmakers.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly highlighted Democratic support for laws that allow abortionists to end the lives of babies who survive abortions. Vice President Kamala Harris — who shook her head at Trump during their presidential debate and indicated he was lying as he discussed Democratic abortion extremism — voted against the Born Alive Infant Survivors Protection Act in 2020.

Given the controversial nature of abortion in the United States, it would seem that Americans should have access to quality reporting and statistics on the topic. But only eight states publicly report or respond to requests for statistics on babies who were born alive during abortion procedures, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

A Daily Wire review found that most of these states are not transparent with their reporting on whether the babies were given care after they were born alive following botched abortions. Minnesota appears to be the only state providing reasons — and Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor, did away with the state’s reporting requirement in May 2023.

Lankford’s legislation would require not only that abortionists “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age,” but also that the abortionist ensures that “the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.”

It would also mandate that health care practitioners, hospital staff, or abortion clinic staff report any knowledge of violations of this law, and states that anyone who intentionally “performs or attempts to perform an overt act that kills a child born alive…shall be punished…for intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being.”

Mothers of babies born alive may not be prosecuted under the law.