Yesterday we posted an important story from our Kansas affiliate celebrating the overwhelming passage of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. It cleared the Senate, 31-9 and the House, 86-36.
HB 2313, SB 320 require that infants who survive abortion attempts be given the same degree of medical care as other children born alive at the same gestational age. No more, but no less.
As Danielle Underwood, KFL Director of Communications, explained, “A supermajority of Kansas legislators heard the testimonies of abortion attempt survivors and doctors and responded with compassion.” She added, “The bill now heads to the governor’s desk where she can sign it into law, allow it to become law without her signature, or veto it. What will Gov. Laura Kelly do next?” (Kelly vetoed a similar bill in 2019.)
The Kansas House’s three top Republicans said in a joint statement
“We can have differing views on abortion and still agree on the need for this legislation as a humanitarian issue.”
So how was this bill, passed by supermajority margins in both houses, treated by the Associated Press? Taking the fact that the bill passed with more than 2/3rd and would be sufficient to overcome a veto by Gov. Kelly, reporter John Hanna countered “Even if abortion opponents succeed in overriding any veto, the measure could still be challenged in court and not enforced.”
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What about the fact that there are babies who survive abortion attempts?
“Over the last several weeks, survivors of failed abortion attempts testified in committee hearings along with doctors who have witnessed these babies fight for their lives,” Kansans for Life wrote. “Other states and countries with reporting requirements for abortion attempts that result in infants being born alive agree: babies who survive abortion attempts are not a myth. They are real.”
Hanna wrote, “Critics of the bill said the state would be intervening in difficult medical and ethical decisions between doctors and parents.”
So is Kansas an “outlier”? No, not at all. Hanna writes,
“The Kansas measure is similar to laws in 18 other states requiring infants delivered alive during labor and delivery abortions to go to a hospital and imposing criminal penalties for doctors who don’t provide the same care ‘a reasonably diligent and conscientious’ provider would with other live births.
What evidence do pro-lifers have that there are babies that survive an attempted abortion who are neglected?
“Despite frequent claims that abortion survivors are a myth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that over 100 babies have survived abortions over 12 years — and those are just the ones that were reported to the CDC,” Cassy Fiano-Chesser reported. “Only about half of all states require abortion complications to be reported, and there are no federal requirements for abortion reporting at all. Yet instances of abortion survivors still surface.”
Oblivious to the numbers from the CDC, Hanna writes, “Anti-abortion groups argue that there are likely hundreds of infants delivered alive during abortion procedures each year in the U.S. The argument is based on extrapolating data from the handful of states requiring reports of such live births, as well as from data from most Canadian provinces.”
The “handful of states” doesn’t include Kansas. The bill would rectify that weakness by requiring annual reports to the state.
This is the famous “dreaded complication”—a baby surviving an abortion—that no doubt keeps pro-abortionists up at a night.
Well, at least those with functioning consciences.
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.
