[W]ASHINGTON — The Senate voted down a bill Monday night that would ban abortions 20 weeks or later into a pregnancy.
Republican leadership put the bill on the floor even though it would likely fail, forcing senators to go on the record. The measure failed to get the necessary 60 votes to proceed. It was defeated 51-46.
Both Vermont senators voted against the bill. Three Democrats crossed the aisle to vote in favor of it, and two Republicans voted against it.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was a lead sponsor of the measure.
“Can a legislative body prohibit an abortion on demand at a time science tells us the baby feels excruciating pain? At a time science tells us the parents should sing to their child? At a time science tells us that this baby has well-connected tissue and can feel pain and on occasion people survive?” Graham said on the Senate floor Monday.
“My answer is yes, it is OK for the Congress and state legislators to pass laws saying at the fifth month we’re going to disallow abortion on demand,” he said.
Both Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voted against the legislation.
“It’s a misleading bill that would restrict a woman’s constitutionally protected right of access to a safe and legal abortion,” Leahy spokesperson David Carle said Tuesday.
Carle said that similar laws at the state level have been struck down by the courts. The bill “circumvented regular order,” he said. The Judiciary Committee did not take up any testimony on the bill.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also voted against it. In a post on Twitter, he said Republicans “have decided to wage war against access to safe, affordable health care.”
Republicans have decided to wage war against access to safe, affordable health care. We cannot go back to the days when women in America did not have the right to control their own bodies. Access to safe and legal abortion is a constitutional right. https://t.co/hNqnXQkaK9
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 29, 2018
According to statistics from the Vermont Department of Health, of the 1,259 abortions in the state in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, just nine occurred at 21 weeks or later in the pregnancy.
The bill had support from some in Vermont, including Mary Beerworth of the Vermont Right to Life Committee.
Waiting 20 weeks to terminate a pregnancy is “shocking,” she said. Beerworth said restrictions in Graham’s bill were “reasonable.”
“A 20-week abortion has to be so traumatic that I just don’t know how anyone could be for it to tell you the truth,” she said.
Beerworth said she has concerns that there are a lack of regulations on abortion in Vermont.
“You have to really be a science denier to deny that human life begins at conception,” she said Monday.
Though the number of abortions in the state has been declining, she has concerns.
“There has to be a lot more care and concern about a whole range of things for the situation to improve for women,” Beerworth said
Many in Vermont oppose a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
Lucy Leriche of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England said the organization believes women should be able to make decisions about their health “without interference” from politicians.
“Women shouldn’t have to justify their personal medical decisions to politicians,” she said.
Leriche said that pregnancies are rarely terminated that late in the gestation period.
“What we find is that in situations like this, by the time it gets to 20 weeks there are often very complex circumstances,” Leriche said. “It adds insult to injury to put bans on women’s and doctor’s decisions at that point.”
