[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 26, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S1458]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     EXECUTIVE CALENDAR--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                                 S. 311

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday evening the Senate had an 
opportunity to go on record and show our constituents that we supported 
the most vulnerable among us. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors 
Protection Act would require doctors to treat a baby, once it is born, 
with ordinary medical assistance, something they would do under any 
other circumstances, even though this entailed surviving an abortion.
  If you ask the American people, they would say this is just common 
sense. In a recent poll, more than three-fourths of Americans said they 
support providing medical treatment for babies who survive abortions. I 
can't imagine what the other 25 percent are thinking. But there are no 
Federal laws requiring healthcare providers to care for these babies 
just as they would any other infant in their care, and for some Members 
of the opposing party, they are just fine with that.
  We all know that a few weeks ago, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam 
made disturbing comments about how to not care for certain newborns. He 
was asked: What would you do with a child with birth defects?
  He said: Well, the infant would be delivered. The infant would be 
kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated, if that is what the 
mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue 
between the physicians and the mother.
  Let me be clear. The Governor, who is a pediatrician, by the way, 
essentially advocated for infanticide--killing a child who was born 
alive. Instead of saying, ``well, it is my duty as a physician under 
the Hippocratic Oath to provide care to save the child,'' he believes 
the child ought to be made comfortable, and then the mother and doctor 
sit down and decide whether the child should live or die.
  That is not healthcare. That is murder. I believe the Senate has a 
duty to act and ensure that no child born alive is subjected to the 
treatment described by Governor Northam.
  The bill we voted on last night would protect newborns who have 
survived abortions and ensure that they receive the same level of care 
that any other newborn baby would. It builds upon a previous law, which 
the Senate passed unanimously, called the Born-Alive Infant Protection 
Act. That bill passed unanimously in 2002, and it clarified that every 
infant born alive at any stage of development is a person, regardless 
of the manner in which they were born. Yet yesterday, 44 Senators voted 
to allow that same person's life to be ended with impunity.
  The legislation we voted on yesterday would simply clarify that the 
infants who survive abortions are entitled to the same lifesaving care 
that other babies should receive. That is why it is so shocking to me 
that 44 of our colleagues chose to vote against even proceeding to a 
debate and a vote on the matter.
  I am trying to think of a historical counterpart to this. I was 
reminded of a book I read not long ago called ``Eichmann in 
Jerusalem.'' This is about the trial of Adolf Eichmann after the 
atrocities of the holocaust, during which 5 million Jews were killed. 
The author, Hannah Arendt, was trying to figure out what kind of 
monster could basically provide for the machinery that ultimately would 
take the lives of 5 million Jews.
  What she saw when she looked at Eichmann was not some monster that 
looked different from you or me. Unfortunately, what she saw was 
somebody who looked exactly like you and me. She wrote about the moral 
collapse associated with the holocaust. She noted that ``in the Third 
Reich, evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people 
had, until then, recognized it.'' She said that the problem is that at 
that point it became a ``civil norm.''
  She wrote:

       Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought, for 
     as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and 
     examine the premises and principles from which it originates, 
     it is frustrated because it finds nothing there.

  ``That,'' she said, ``is the banality of evil.''
  She concluded by saying:

       Nearly everybody who attended the trials of mass killers 
     after the war, some of them respected doctors and 
     pharmacists, came away with the disconcerting impression that 
     the killers looked pretty much like you and me.

  So while Republicans and Democrats disagree on a range of issues, 
this should not be one of them. If we have one shred of our humanity 
left, we ought to agree that protecting human life is essential. This 
should have been a simple vote for every single Member of this body. I 
can't tell you how disappointed I am that 44 of our colleagues decided 
to vote no. I was proud to vote yes on the bill, yes to protecting 
these newborn babies, yes to equal medical care for all infants, and 
yes to life.