Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker defended his vote for infanticide — saying that a bill for medical care for babies who are born alive after failed abortions it’s just meant to divide people.

Earlier this year, Senator Booker voted to prevent the Senate from voting on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. That is legislation that would require doctors to provide appropriate medical care and treatment for babies who survive abortions.

But Booker, during a campaign stop, mislead voters by saying that infanticide is illegal in the legislation is unnecessary.

“This recent bill – about – that caused a lot of controversy right? People from a lot of church communities that I frequent say to me ‘Did you vote against this this thing that allows us to kill babies when they’re born?’ And I’m like that is a felony, that is a crime and that cannot happen under any law. This was something that was brought forward to try to further create schisms and differences between us. You cannot kill a child after birth in this country. That is against the law. For women that are really in that difficult position — so-called late-term abortions — some people try to make it seem like that commonly happens. That happens when a woman’s life is being threatened and the viability of the fetus as well as compromised.”

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While Booker claimed infanticide after abortion doesn’t happen, CDC figures prove otherwise.

Data reports from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show the incidence of born-alive abortion survivors who are killed in the U.S. According to Congressional testimony:

Data that the CDC collects also confirms babies are born alive after attempted abortions. Between the years 2003 and 2014 there were somewhere between 376 and 588 infant deaths under the medical code P96.4 which keeps track of babies born alive after a “termination of pregnancy.” SIGN THE PETITION: Stop Infanticide! Stop Abortions Up to Birth! The CDC concluded that, of the 588 babies, 143 were “definitively” born alive after an attempted abortion and they lived from minutes to one or more days, with 48% of the babies living between one to four hours. It also admitted that it’s possible the number is an underestimate. We know it is an underestimate because these are just reported numbers from hospitals, not abortion facilities. Gosnell is only one abortionist who was responsible for “hundreds of snippings” of born-alive babies, yet he did not report even one. His numbers alone exceed the “definitive” numbers of the CDC.

Moreover, a total of 19 states do not require any protection for babies born alive after botched abortions.

Further, Booker is wrong when he says late-term abortions are done to save a mother’s life or on non-viable babies. The Guttmacher Institute cited a study from 2013 that found “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

While not nearly as common as early abortions performed in the first trimester, abortions performed at or after 24 weeks are hardly “rare.” In fact, the CDC estimates that roughly 13,000 of these late-term abortions are performed in the United States every single year. That’s enough unborn babies to fill up about half the L.A. Chargers football stadium.