With all Republicans supporting and all but six Democrats opposing, the House of Representatives today passed The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 4712) by a vote of 241-183.
Looking ahead, NRLC President Carol Tobias cut to the chase when she commented, “The 183 House Democrats who voted against the bill will need to try to explain why they voted against making it a crime to treat a born-alive human person as medical waste, as a source for organ harvesting, or as a creature who may be subjected to lethal violence with impunity.”
As is always the case, Democrats insisted all is well and that there is no reason to pass a law that simply says if a baby survives an abortion attempt, he or she will receive “the same degree of care as reasonably provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” Not more but not less medical care.
“This bill is a solution in search of a problem,” huffed Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif. “It’s unnecessary, redundant, and part of a broader attack on women’s health and reproductive health from the chamber and the Trump administration.”
To begin with, to all but a handful of Democrats, everything—everything—is always and forever a “part of a broader attack on women’s health and reproductive health.”
In this case they insist either that no baby is ever born alive during an abortion attempt; that if they are they would have died anyway soon after ; or that there already is The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 so there is no need for H.R. 4712; and if all else fails, change the subject by telling us that most babies are aborted long before they could survive an abortion when the question is what medical care do you extend to those babies who do survive?
What really annoyed the 183 Democrats is that H.R. 4712 has enforcement teeth. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) explained, “doctors who fail to provide medical care to newborns will be held criminally accountable. There is absolutely no ambiguity here. This is about protecting babies who are born and alive, and nobody should be against that.”
What about the idea that nobody would fail to give medical treatment to abortion survivors? Watch the undercover videos taken by the Center for Medical Progress and ask yourself would this crew be the least bit interested in helping born-alive abortion survivors?
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And remember, these babies were not being treated prior to the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act(BAIPA), passed without a dissenting vote, subsequently signed into law by President George W. Bush and codified as 1 U.S.C. §8. The law stated that “every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development” is a “person” for all federal law purposes.
In addition to those abortion “practitioners” who still evade the law, there is the specter of abortionists changing their abortion procedures because “many researchers want tissue from late-gestation infants ‘untainted by feticidal agents,’” according to the final report of The House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives issued in January 2017.
In the quest for “intact fetal cadavers,” the change in technique increases the likelihood that unborn infants are born alive during late second-trimester abortions. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act would strengthen enforcement of existing law, such as BAIPA
Critics of The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act flatly ignore the CMP videos, the House Panel report, and the thirst for “intact fetal organs.”
But…is anyone surprised by that?
Kudos to House Republicans for the vote, a fitting present on the day of the March for Life to our Movement.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
