A horrific new report from the Irish government confirms that babies are being born alive in abortions and potentially left to die without medical care.
Published this week, the 2020 abortion report from the Ireland Department of Health does not mention how many babies have been born alive in abortions, but it confirms that some are.
“The scenario is simply horrifying,” Niamh Uí Bhriain of The Life Institute responded. “Only the hardest of hearts, the cruelest of policymakers, would not find this deeply, deeply disturbing. A child, born alive after an abortion, likely struggling to breathe, left without care, with doctors – those who are meant to save lives – hoping they will die.”
The fact was revealed in a section of the government report about palliative care and conscience objections. Based on interviews with medical professionals, the report suggests many feel troubled about providing “comfort care” to these newborns until they die. Some also brought up the conflict of abortion survivors and premature babies born at the same stages.
“Some participants in this review described having very good support from their neonatal and paediatric colleagues in managing comfort care for babies born alive following a termination of pregnancy …” the report states, confirming that babies are surviving in Ireland.
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The alarming report backs up a 2020 journal article that also found evidence of babies surviving abortions and being left to die under the country’s new abortion law.
Writing at Gript, a conservative news organization in Ireland, Bhriain continued:
Discussing palliative care – where comfort care is needed for babies born alive after a late-term abortion – the review coldly notes that some paediatricians and neonatologists do not want to be involved in assisting these babies.
“However, the extent to which they are prepared to become involved is described as differing across settings and differing across the circumstances of the birth, with some not being prepared to offer comfort care where the birth is a result of a termination of pregnancy,” the review, authored by barrister Marie O’Shea, notes.
Despite the shocking new revelations, Bhriain said lawmakers are pushing to deregulate abortion even more in Ireland.
“What a heartbreaking, shameful indictment of Ireland and her people,” she said.
Ireland voted to repeal its Eighth Amendment, which granted unborn babies a right to life, in 2018. By the end of 2019, 6,666 unborn babies had been legally aborted in the country. The law allows abortions for any reason up to 12 weeks and up to birth in cases of fetal anomalies.
In the 2020 study, 10 Irish doctors who do late-term abortions described their “brutal” work of killing unborn babies by “stabbing the baby in the heart.” They also expressed concerns about babies surviving abortions and uncertainty about who is supposed to care for the babies when they do.
“The findings in this study are truly heart-breaking. It goes way beyond confirming the worst fears that pro-life campaigners expressed before the 2018 referendum about what would happen in the event of legalized abortion,” said Eilís Mulroy of the Pro Life Campaign, at the time.
Mulroy said she felt horrified that the doctors seemed more concerned about legal liability than babies’ lives.
In the study, some of the doctors expressed concerns about being sued if a baby would live outside the womb longer than they predicted. The law allows late-term abortions if two doctors agree that the unborn baby’s diagnosis is “likely to lead to the death” of the unborn baby either before birth or within the first 28 days of his/her life outside the womb. According to Irish health statistics, 100 babies were aborted in 2019 because of a fatal anomaly.
“None of us want to be in a situation where we thought, ah sure deliver and then the baby is alive six weeks later and there’s all the issues that go with that,” one doctor told researchers.
According to The Iona Institute, doctors admitted in the 2020 journal article that “sometimes when these babies are aborted by delivery rather than killing them while they are still in the womb (feticide), they can survive.”
“This generated concern for the FMSs (Fetal Medicine Specialists) as they are ‘unclear as to who will look after these babies’ if a baby is born alive following TOP (Termination of Pregnancy) by induction of labour and without feticide, resulting in them ‘begging people to help’ them in providing palliative care,” the journal article stated.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of babies survive abortions every year, but no one knows exactly how many. Most governments do not keep track of babies who survive abortions.
LifeNews recently examined abortion data from seven U.S. states that do keep track, and, between 2020 and 2022, 34 babies were reported born alive in botched abortions.
Statistics from the U.S. 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 likely are many more.
In Canada, the Canadian Institute of Health Information recorded 766 late-term, live-birth abortions over a five-year period in 2018. And in Australia, the country’s health minister admitted that 27 babies survived abortions in the state of Western Australia between 1999 and 2016.
