CV NEWS FEED // During a Tuesday hearing, Biden administration Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra refused to give a direct answer to Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, when the lawmaker repeatedly asked him if he supports full-term abortions.
Becerra is a self-professed Catholic.
“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?” Kennedy asked Becerra on the Senate floor.
“Senator, let me make sure,” Becerra said in reply. “Up to the moment of birth? You’re saying after gestation, the 40 weeks –”
Kennedy cut him off: “You know what I’m saying, Mr. Secretary.”
The senator continued: “Let’s 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 … the right to abort the baby then?” Kennedy asked Becerra again.
Becerra responded: “I heard no one say that. I think everyone has said – those who support reproductive rights … support Roe v. Wade.”
Kennedy proceeded to read Becerra’s own remarks from a 2020 press release.
In the release, Becerra – then the Attorney General of California – commented, “No government, state or federal, has the right to make decisions for a woman about her body or her healthcare.”
“Good words,” the now-secretary said after Kennedy read his statement from four years ago.
“Let me ask you again,” the senator said. “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?”
“Again, I’ll give you the answer,” Becerra replied. “I’ve always supported Roe v. Wade which does not do what you’ve just said and I know of no one who is proposing or advocating what you’ve just announced.”
“And I would hope that what you would recognize is that that should not stop a woman from having the right to decide for herself with the consultation of her physician what she should do,” he added.
Kennedy rephrased his earlier question: “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?”
“I certainly would support the reestablishment of Roe v. Wade,” Becerra stated, not giving a “yes” or “no” answer.
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