President Donald Trump hit back at the U.S. Senate’s failure on Monday to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would have capped abortion at 20 weeks.
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The commander in chief not only rebuked the Senate, but went on to implore its members to reconsider the vote and to subsequently pass a bill that would “celebrate, cherish, and protect life.”
Trump’s strongly worded statement referenced the recent speech he delivered earlier this month at the March for Life and reiterated his support for policies that protect the lives of unborn children.
“It is disappointing that despite support from a bipartisan majority of U.S. Senators, this bill was blocked from further consideration,” Trump said. “Scientific studies have demonstrated that babies in the womb feel pain at twenty weeks.”
Trump said that the failed vote “rejects scientific fact” and he also issued an excoriating rebuke of U.S. policy on abortion, comparing current laws to the measures on the books in other countries.
“The vote … puts the United States out of the mainstream in the family of nations, in which only 7 out of 198 nations, including China and North Korea, allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy,” he said. “We must defend those who cannot defend themselves.”
In the end, Trump urged senators to go back to the drawing board and reconsider their decision.
As Faithwire previously reported, the bill would have banned abortion at 20 weeks, a measure that sparked controversy among those in the pro-choice community. The measure had exemptions for rape, incest and a mother’s life, but did not have them for fetal abnormalities, the Washington Examiner reported.
Trump’s condemnation of the Senate bill failure comes on the heels of his historic address to the March for Life earlier this month, during which he took pointed aim at late-term abortion, which he said is “wrong” and must change.
“Roe vs. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world,” he said, lamenting locations in the U.S. that allow late-term abortion “in the ninth month” of a woman’s pregnancy. “It is wrong. It has to change.”