While neighboring Virginia is pushing to expand the killing of unborn babies, West Virginia lawmakers are voting to protect babies from abortion.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, or House Bill 4007, passed the state Senate Health and Human Resources Committee on Thursday in an 11-1 vote. State Sen. Corey Palumbo, D-Kanawha County, cast the only vote against the bill.
The legislation would require abortionists to provide reasonable medical care to a baby who survives an abortion. According to the bill, physicians must “exercise the same degree of reasonable medical judgment to preserve the life and health of the child as a physician would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age; and to ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.”
The West Virginia House passed the bill earlier this month, and it now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.
Pro-abortion Democrats in the state claimed the bill is unnecessary because the state already bans abortions after 20 weeks – before unborn babies are viable.
However, Democrats also are pushing to expand abortions across America, and viability is a moving line that continues to grow as medical technology advances.
Though babies’ survivals have been called “imaginary” and protections for them unnecessary, government health data proves that infants sometimes do survive abortions.
Between 2016 and 2018, at least 40 babies survived abortions in just three states, meaning their likely are many more. According to state health data, 11 babies were born alive after botched abortions in Minnesota, 10 in Arizona and 19 in Florida.
Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the personal testimonies of nurses and abortion survivors themselves, also provide evidence that babies survive abortions. According to the CDC, at least 143 babies were born alive after botched abortions between 2003 and 2014 in the U.S., though there almost certainly were more.
The American Center for Law and Justice estimated the number is much higher, and at least 362 babies likely survived abortions between 2001 and 2010.
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Despite the strong need for protections for babies who survive abortions, Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate blocked a federal Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act more than 80 times in 2019.
Currently, about 18 states do not have laws to protect abortion survivors from infanticide. Some states never have passed laws to protect abortion survivors, while at least two others, New York and Illinois, repealed their laws protecting infants who survive abortions.
In 2019, Texas passed a law strengthening protections for infants who survive abortions. The state legislatures in Montana, North Carolina and Wisconsin did as well; however, their Democratic governors vetoed the legislation. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers argued that the legislation was “not a productive use of time.”
