Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) grilled Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra over his position on abortion, asking whether there was any case in which he would support imposing restrictions on women seeking to terminate their pregnancies.
During a Tuesday hearing, Kennedy posed a hypothetical scenario — a healthy baby and a healthy mother, one day before the due date — and Becerra repeatedly refused to say whether he’d support banning abortion even in that case.
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"Would you support making it illegal to abort a baby, if the mother is healthy, and the baby is healthy, on the day before that baby is scheduled to be born?"@SenJohnKennedy presses @SecBecerra on his support for no-limits abortion pic.twitter.com/K2mkoSGW0i
— SBA Pro-Life America (@sbaprolife) April 16, 2024
After thanking Secretary Becerra for his time, Kennedy jumped straight to the heart of his questions.
“Mr. Secretary, if the mother is healthy and the baby is healthy, do you really support abortion of the baby up to the moment of birth?” he asked.
“Senator, let me make sure — to the moment of birth? You’re saying after gestation, the 40 weeks —” Becerra attempted to clarify the question.
Kennedy obliged, saying, “Let’s suppose — suppose it’s the day before the due date, and the baby is fully formed and the baby is healthy and the mother is healthy, do you support aborting — the right to abort the baby then?”
“I’ve heard no one say that,” Becerra protested, claiming that “reproductive rights” advocates were only saying that they supported the provisions of the recently-overturned 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
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Kennedy responded by reading a 2020 statement from Becerra himself, who said at the time, “No government, state or federal, has the right to make decisions for a woman about her body or her health care.”
“Your words, not mine,” Kennedy added. “I ask you again, up to the moment of birth, if the mother’s healthy and the baby’s healthy, do you believe that there should be the right to abort that baby? Up to the moment of birth.”
Becerra again claimed that he had “always supported Roe v, Wade, which doesn’t do what you just said,” and said that he did not know of anyone who was arguing in favor of abortion until the moment of birth. He went on to say that it should still be a decision left entirely up to a woman and her doctor.
Kennedy tried once more, asking Becerra directly whether he would support any restrictions on abortion in cases where both mother and baby were healthy and the baby was full term. The HHS Secretary would only answer that he would support bringing back Roe.
“I want your answer,” Kennedy pressed again. “Roe v. Wade has been overturned. I want your answer.”
But even as Kennedy repeated the direct question several more times, Becerra refused to give a straight answer.