I believe Beatrix Potter would have approved.
On Monday evening, Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) called for unanimous consent to his Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require that infants delivered alive during attempted abortion procedures be given appropriate medical care.
Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.) objected to the bill on the floor on behalf of her Democratic colleagues, preventing the legislation from receiving unanimous consent. "We have laws against infanticide in this country," Murray said. "This is a gross misinterpretation of the actual language of the bill that is being asked to be considered, and therefore I object."
It is worth examining why Sasse’s legislation, which now has 42 Republican cosponsors, is neither redundant nor unnecessary. Most important, there is no existing federal law that prohibits the denial of medical care to infants born alive in the context of abortion, which is what this bill would do.
In 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) passed Congress by unanimous consent and was signed into law by President George W. Bush, establishing that the terms "person," "human being," "child," and "individual" in federal law include every infant born alive, even after an abortion. But that’s all it did ‐ it instituted no penalties for physicians who neglected to care for such infants.