Senate Democrats Block G.O.P. Effort to Criminalize Some Abortion Providers

Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-written bill on Wednesday that could subject some doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties, thwarting the G.O.P.’s first attempt to restrict reproductive rights since the party has secured its governing trifecta.

With Democrats unanimously opposed, the measure stalled in the Senate on a party-line vote of 52 to 47, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and advance toward a final vote.

Its consideration, scheduled to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and on the same week as the annual March For Life in Washington, was part of a continuing Republican effort to appeal to its conservative, anti-abortion-rights base.

The bill would require that infants born alive after an attempted abortion receive the same protection under the law and degree of care as any newborn baby, and threaten medical providers with up to five years in prison for failing to resuscitate babies born alive during abortions.

Federal law already requires that a baby who survives an attempted abortion receive emergency medical care, and live births during abortion procedures are rare. But the legislation would create new penalties for medical providers involved in such procedures, which could also apply to those treating women with severe late-pregnancy complications who find themselves in agonizing situations in which their children have no chance of survival.

The House passed the same bill last year and is expected to take it up again later this week.

Conservative groups have continued to make opposition to abortion rights a litmus test, even as outright abortion bans have alienated voters across the country in multiple election cycles. Republicans have routinely brought up what they call the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” when they are in control of Congress, presenting it as something that should not be debatable.

“This shouldn’t be a controversial bill,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said Wednesday. “We should all be able to say that a baby born alive after an attempted abortion must be protected.”

Republicans used the debate to portray Democrats as extremists on an issue that has proved politically toxic to G.O.P. candidates since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“Because there’s nothing more important to Democrats than abortion,” Mr. Thune added, “they will vote against legislation to provide appropriate medical care to babies born alive in an abortion clinic.”

Democrats warned that the measure was merely the leading edge of a broader assault by Republicans on abortion rights meant to be carried out across the country even though they have insisted that the issue should be left to the states.

“They told you they wouldn’t touch abortion — that was a lie, gone, after two days,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “Americans should take this as a warning: Watch what they do, not what they say or have said.”

Senator Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska, said it was “absolutely barbaric” that a baby born alive after a botched abortion would be “left to die of exposure.” All the bill would do, he said, was require medical treatment be given to those babies.

And Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, described in graphic detail how a woman he knows who survived an abortion was discovered in a hospital when somebody noticed that the “medical waste was crying.”

Democrats accused Republicans of peddling misinformation and seeking to criminalize doctors involved in the most devastating moments for women and their families.

“If a baby is born alive and a doctor kills it, that is today illegal, and they would be taken to court and appropriately punished,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington. She said what the legislation would actually do was force doctors to take away a fetus with a fatal anomaly from a grieving mother.

In bringing up the bill, Republicans appeared to be using a similar political strategy to the one they have employed on immigration this month: putting forth a narrow measure they contend is a common-sense step and essentially daring Democrats to oppose it. On Wednesday, the House was set to give final approval to a bill that would mandate detentions and potential deportations for migrants who enter the country without authorization and are accused of certain crimes after dozens of Democrats embraced it despite their concerns that it lacked due process for the accused.

But while there is ample evidence that a bipartisan political consensus is growing to clamp down on illegal immigration, there is no such agreement on the issue of abortion rights. In fact, Democrats saw some silver lining in Republicans’ insistence on taking up a messaging bill on the issue. About 63 percent of voters support abortion being legal in all or most cases, according to a Pew survey.

“The only good news is they’re showing their true colors only two days after the president was sworn in,” Mr. Schumer said.

But Republicans like Senator John Cornyn of Texas said they were standing up against what amounted to “infanticide.”

The surgical method typically used to perform an abortion after the first trimester, known as dilation and evacuation, makes the odds of a live birth negligible. A vast majority of abortions in the United States occur in the first trimester, before the point of fetal viability, which is currently at about 23 weeks.

Policy organizations supporting abortion rights said the measure was an effort to discourage women from seeking abortions and doctors from performing them.

Democrats said it was a disgrace that Republicans were using the first week of Mr. Trump’s presidency to escalate their attacks on women’s reproductive freedom.

“It would create a new government mandate that would override the best judgment of grieving families that find out their fetus has a fatal condition,” Ms. Murray said. “Americans are rightly worried about what will happen to their reproductive rights under Republican control of government. During the first week of Trump’s pregnancy, this is what Republicans are focused on?”