Doctors today routinely diagnose and treat a myriad of conditions, illnesses and diseases suffered by society’s littlest patients — unborn babies and newborns — significantly enhancing both their health and longevity.

     Abortionists, on the other hand, take a different approach. They dismember and chemically kill unborn children for profit.

     For several decades, babies have survived late term abortions. A Philadelphia Inquirer article 37 years ago (August 1981) called baby survival “The Dreaded Complication.”

     Dr. Willard Cates, M.D., former head of the Centers of Disease Control Abortion Surveillance Unit, was quoted saying, “[Live births] are little known because organized medicine, from fear of public clamor and legal action, treats them more as an embarrassment to be hushed up than a problem to be solved. It’s like turning yourself in to the IRS for an audit What is there to gain? The tendency is not to report because there are only negative incentives.”

Jan 18 2018 art by Alexander Hunter at The Washington Times.

    When an undercover investigator asked an abortion provider about the procedure for checking for signs of life in a baby born after an abortion attempt, the doctor responded: “I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”

     Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder for killing children who were born alive after attempted abortions. The Grand Jury report described his practices:

    Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ‘snipping.’

     “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings.’”

     National Public Radio (NPR) did an incisive story featuring former Planned Parenthood director — now pro-life leader — Abby Johnson’s outreach to abortion clinic workers, encouraging them to quit their jobs inside abortion clinics.

     Heard on Jan. 11, 2018, on NPR’s “All things Considered,” Annette Lancaster, a former manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic in North Carolina, said the work made her feel “dark and morbid.” Annette said she was “troubled by the way she and some of the other workers referred to fetal remains,” NPR reported. She said, “I just started being able to use the deep freezer in my home by going through [therapy], because we used to call the freezer the ‘nursery’ and we used to think that was funny.”

     The National Abortion Federation standard textbook for the abortion industry states, “Providers should consider the possibility of a live born fetus, particularly if fetal death is not induced prior to the procedure and the gestational age is 18 to 20 weeks or more Besides the emotional and ethical difficulties for patients, their partners and staff, a delivery with signs of life may have legal implications.”

     The problem with existing law is enforcement — the lack of legal implications.

     The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 4712), sponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican:

• Requires appropriate health care to be given to any child who survives an attempted abortion

    The law prescribes that “any health care practitioner present at the time the child is born shall:

• Exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.

• Following the exercise of skill, care and diligence ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported to a hospital.”

    Additionally:

• It establishes strong criminal penalties for practitioners who violate this requirement.

• It establishes a civil right of action for the mother of the child, to enforce the law.

• It requires that the mother of the child born alive may not be prosecuted under this law.

Chris Smith, a Republican U.S. representative from New Jersey, is chairman of the congressional pro-life caucus.

This article was first published in the print edition of the Washington Times on Jan. 19, 2018 and can be found online at:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/18/how-the-born-alive-abortion-survivors-protection-a/