Sen. Mazie Hirono tried to block the passage of the anti-infanticide bill in the senate and claimed that the Republicans are getting in the way of women’s right to make choices.

Hirono tried to prove her point by making false claims during the Senate debate last Tuesday.

Hirono began her speech by saying that “To honestly discuss the bill, we need a factually, and medically accurate conversation about abortion,” although she herself, had also made misleading statements.

The first false claim that Hirono mad is that she accused Republicans of placing restrictions to control women’s bodies, when in fact it was meant simply for the preservation of life. In her remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hirono said “No one here is in favor of infanticide; no one here is in favor of killing or harming infants. Infanticide is a crime, and it always has been.”

She also added that “I heard that the state has an interest in the unborn child. I thought the state also has an interest in women having control over our own bodies.”

The second false claim Hirono made is that the bill was “a solution to a problem that does not exist,” and claimed that infanticide had already been illegal in America.

In an effort to persuade the Senate, Hirono brought up the 2002 law which would make it illegal to kill an infant as they are already considered as persons with legal protections.

“So, if infanticide is already illegal in this country, then why are we here? Why are my Senate Republican colleagues pushing so hard for this bill?” Hirono said during the hearing. “And the answer is simple: This bill is the latest in a decades-long effort by Republicans aiming to take control of women’s bodies and prevent us from exercising our constitutional right to make personal decisions which include abortion in this country.” However, the problem is that Hirono failed to mention that the bill addresses instances in which the parent would leave the baby to die, even if the child survives the abortion.

Ben Sasse, chairman of the hearing and sponsor of the Born-Alive bill, refuted Hirono’s false claims. Sasse explained, “Infanticide is indeed illegal in the U.S., and yet in half of the states, there is no criminalization of walking away from the baby and allowing it to die by exposure,” Sasse said. “There’s an active-passive distinction and a state-federal distinction which are both pretty fundamental.”

To back Sasse’s claims, Patrina Mosley of the Family Research Council Director Of Life, Culture And Women’s Advocacy testified that only very few states “require health care practitioners to exercise professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life of an infant born-alive after an abortion attempt.”

The Daily Wire also noted that the bill does not want to control women’s choices, rather it is meant to provide service to babies that are born alive, just like any other human being.

“[The bill] includes no new restrictions on abortions whatsoever. It only states that if a baby survives an abortion attempt, medical professionals must give him or her “the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence” that they would “any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”

The bill used the term from the 1 US Code, Section 8 (b) which explained what constitutes a human being. “The term “born alive,” with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.”