Perennially misinformed Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) tried to stop an anti-infanticide bill in the senate on Tuesday by making two false statements. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) quickly stepped in to correct her.
First, Hirono pointed out that infanticide is already illegal in America and claimed the bill was “a solution to a problem that does not exist,” even though the bill addresses instances where a baby is aborted but survives and left to die. Second, Hirono claimed Republicans are actually trying to place restrictions on women’s ability to choose abortion, The Blaze’s Nate Madden reported.
“No one here is in favor of infanticide; no one here is in favor of killing or harming infants,” Hirono said in prepared remarks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. “Infanticide is a crime, and it always has been.”
As Madden reported, Hirono brought up a 2002 law that would make it illegal to kill an infant because infants are recognized as legal persons with protections.
“So, if infanticide is already illegal in this country, then why are we here? Why are my Senate Republican colleagues pushing so hard for this bill?” Hirono said during the hearing. “And the answer is simple: This bill is the latest in a decades-long effort by Republicans aiming to take control of women’s bodies and prevent us from exercising our constitutional right to make personal decisions which include abortion in this country.”
She added that the bill “offers a solution to a problem that does not exist.”
“I heard that the state has an interest in the unborn child,” Hirono said. “I thought the state also has an interest in women having control over our own bodies.”
Sasse, chairman of the hearing and sponsor of the Born-Alive bill, corrected Hirono’s claims.
“Infanticide is indeed illegal in the U.S., and yet in half of the states, there is no criminalization of walking away from the baby and allowing it to die by exposure,” Sasse said. “There’s an active-passive distinction and a state-federal distinction which are both pretty fundamental.”
As Madden reported, earlier in the hearing Patrina Mosley of the Family Research Council explained that just 26 states have bills that protect infants who survived botched abortions. The 2002 bill cited by Hirono, Madden explained, “didn’t specify what the obligations to care for them were or impose penalties for not doing so.”
Further, the bill sponsored by Sasse includes no new restrictions on abortions whatsoever. It only states that if a baby survives and abortion attempt, medical professionals must give him or her “the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence” that they would “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”
Hirono has mislead the public about this bill for more than a year. In March 2019, after the bill failed to pass the senate, Hirono made multiple false claims” about the legislation, as The Daily Wire’s Frank Camp reported. At the time, she made the two false statements she reiterated in Tuesday’s hearing, but also made a nonsensical claim about comforting an unwanted child.
“…doctors will be required to resuscitate infants born with fatal conditions, even if the parents did not want these measures that could prolong their infant’s suffering and instead wanted to spend the limited time they had with their baby comforting their child and holding them close,” Hirono claimed.
As Camp wrote:
This makes no sense. The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act mandates care for infants born following failed abortions. An abortion, if performed properly, results in the termination of a fetus. Why would a woman spend time “comforting” a deceased fetus after the she underwent a procedure that was specifically intended to end its life?