As a people, we’re polarized. In the Spherical Model, that
means some of us prefer freedom, prosperity, and civilization, while others
surprisingly prefer tyranny, poverty, and savagery. This is not an
exaggeration.
This week Democrats in the Senate voted against protecting
the life of babies after they are born.
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| Ben Sasse, screen shot from here |
There’s a history here for Democrats. The Born-Alive Infants
Protection Act has been law since 2002. It had been debated since 1999 or
earlier. It says what law and most people already agreed on: a baby born alive
is a human being, with all the rights and dignity of any other human—regardless
of an intention to kill that baby before it was born. It didn't change existing law; it just defined "born alive" to mean a human person.
In 2002 it was a bi-partisan bill. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY,
called it unnecessary, but would support it anyway. He said, “The courts have
been clear. There is no such thing as a right to a live-birth abortion. A baby
born alive is a baby, a human being under the terms of the law in all 50 states
and the District of Columbia. This bill merely restates that, so we have no
problem with it.”
The term “live-birth abortion,” referred to by Nadler, was a term used for a procedure
in which labor was induced, typically before viability, to cause the birth and
subsequent inevitable death of the infant. Because this involved an actual
born-alive infant, the preferred procedure became “partial-birth abortion.”
The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, 2000 version,
describes the history and necessity of the bill in the “Purpose and Summary”
section:
It has long been an accepted legal principle that infants who
are born alive, at any stage of development, are persons who are entitled to
the protections of the law. But recent changes in the legal and cultural
landscape have brought this well-settled principle into question.
In Stenberg v. Carhart,[i]
for example, the United States Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law banning
partial-birth abortion, a procedure in which an abortionist delivers an unborn
child’s body until only the head remains inside of the womb, punctures the back
of the child’s skull with scissors, and sucks the child’s brains out before
completing the delivery. What was described in Roe v. Wade as a right to abort ‘‘unborn children’’ has thus been
extended by the Court to include the violent destruction of partially born
children just inches from complete birth.
The Carhart Court
considered the location of an infant’s body at the moment of death during a
partial-birth abortion—delivered partly outside the body of the mother—to be of
no legal significance in ruling on the constitutionality of the Nebraska law.
Instead, implicit in the Carhart
decision was the pernicious notion that a partially born infant’s entitlement
to the protections of the law is dependent upon whether or not the partially
born child’s mother wants the child.
Following Stenberg v.
Carhart, on July 26, 2000, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit made that point explicit in Planned
Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer,[ii]
in the course of striking down New Jersey’s partial-birth abortion ban.
According to the Third Circuit, under Roe
and Carhart, it is ‘‘nonsensical’’
and ‘‘based on semantic machinations’’ and ‘‘irrational line-drawing’’ for a
legislature to conclude that an infant’s location in relation to his or her
mother’s body has any relevance in determining whether that infant may be
killed. Instead, the Farmer Court repudiated New Jersey’s classification of the
prohibited procedure as being a ‘‘partial birth,’’ and concluded that a child’s
status under the law, regardless of the child’s location, is dependent upon
whether the mother intends to abort the child or to give birth. The Farmer Court stated that, in contrast to
an infant whose mother intends to give birth, an infant who is killed during a
partial-birth abortion is not entitled to the protections of the law because
‘‘[a] woman seeking an abortion is plainly not seeking to give birth.’’[iii]
The logical implications of Carhart and Farmer are
both obvious and disturbing. Under the logic of these decisions, once a child
is marked for abortion, it is wholly irrelevant whether that child emerges from
the womb as a live baby. That child may still be treated as a non-entity, and
would have not the slightest rights under the law—no right to receive medical
care, to be sustained in life, or to receive any care at all. And if a child
who survives an abortion and is born alive would have no claim to the
protections of the law, there would, then, be no basis upon which the
government may prohibit an abortionist from completely
delivering an infant before killing the infant or leaving the infant to
die. The ‘‘right to abortion,’’ under this logic, means nothing less than the
right to a dead baby, no matter where the killing takes place.
Back when this was being debated, the arguments were little
different from today. Even though this Act concerns only babies born alive,
opponents argued either that it was irrelevant, because nobody wanted to kill
live babies, and/or the bill was intended to curtail women’s rights by limiting
Roe v. Wade.
Roe never
concerned itself with viable fetuses. At the time, that was roughly considered
the third trimester of pregnancy. So, according to Roe, states were always allowed to set restrictions on
third-trimester abortions. The third trimester begins around 28 weeks. However,
with improved technology and treatments, babies born at 24-25 weeks survive at
much higher rates than they used to. And there’s a story of a baby born at 21 weeks who is now doing well at age 4.
That means states often base their abortion restrictions not
on the strict date given in Roe, but
on the general principle of viability. And further, many have recognized that
the growing fetus experiences pain by 20 weeks, so that is a frequent line used
in state abortion laws.
Roe was never
intended to deal with live-born infants who survive abortions, so it has
nothing to say about that.
The other argument, that it was irrelevant, wasn’t so then,
and it isn’t so now.
There’s an exchange in the Senate, back in 1999, between Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who had sponsored the bill that year, and Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer. He
is trying to get her to define “born,” and where that line is. What about if
there’s still a foot inside the birth canal? She refuses to define, saying it’s
obvious when a baby is born or not. After stonewalling multiple times and
repeating that she supports Roe v. Wade,
which was irrelevant, she finally claims to support a born-alive baby’s right
to life:
Santorum: Good! All I am asking you is, once the baby leaves
the mother’s birth canal and is through the vaginal orifice and is in the hands
of the obstetrician, you would agree that you cannot abort, kill the baby?
Boxer: I would say when the baby is born, the baby is born,
and would then have every right of every other human being living in this
country. And I don’t know why this would even be a question, to be honest with
you.
It was a question,
and continues to be a question, because abortionists, regardless of the law, go
ahead and kill born-alive babies. That was brought to our attention with Virginia Governor Northam’s description last month. While he has attempted to clarify, his clarifications do nothing to
convince listeners that he wasn’t talking about infanticide; he seems tone deaf
to the idea that people might object to killing a baby after birth that was intended to be killed before birth.
Senator Sasse referenced Governor Northam’s statement when
proposing the new version of the law. His bill proposed rules and penalties, to
define what care should be given and what penalties should ensue if care is not
given. Because, how can a doctor who was moments before trying to kill a baby be
trusted to give the newborn the utmost care?
As it was two decades ago, opponents insistently repeat that they support Roe v. Wade, which is still irrelevant
to born babies. And they claim this is a non-issue that never comes up.
Except that testimony comes from actual survivors. One
survivor, Melissa Ohden, now age 41, survived a saline abortion—in which there’s an
injection of saline intended to burn the unborn baby inside and out, to kill it
within 24 hours, after which the dead fetus is to be expelled from the body.
Ohden survived that attempt to kill her. She is the founder of Abortion
Survivors Network. There are many.
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| Melissa Ohden, abortion survivor screen shot from here |
If Northam is any clue, there would be many more, if they
weren’t killed.
In a Fox News interview with Ben Sasse, interviewer Martha MacCallum referenced a young man she had interviewed a week or so earlier. He
was born without arms. The doctor turned to the parents and said, “What do you
want us to do?” meaning, should they go ahead and put him down, like you would
a dog. The parents wanted him alive, and he lives a productive life today.
The question is, how much has this killing of live babies been
done behind closed doors, without anyone speaking up? The Gosnell case was
supposed to be an anomaly; Northam speaks about the things Gosnell was
prosecuted for as simply a day’s work.
Senator Sasse said those who argued against the bill claimed
it eroded a woman’s “right” to abortion and stood between her and the doctor.
But, as with the 2002 Born-Alive Protection Act, it did nothing to touch
abortion, because it was about born babies. The original 2002 bill defined “born
alive,” and this bill defined penalties for failing to care for babies born
alive.
While this was a pro-life bill, it was not an anti-abortion
bill. But pro-abortionists are the ones who fear it. Everyone can see that the
moment of birth doesn’t actually change the fetus into a baby, except by legal
definition. That means the pro-abortionists have been pro-baby-killing all
along.
The bill was defeated in the Senate in a 53-44 vote against
cloture, which was short of the 60 votes needed to move the bill along.
Whatever the excuses, those voting against it were voting in
favor of infanticide. They want a woman and her doctor to have the power to put
to death an infant that has already been born and is alive. That idea was
horrifying to both Democrats and Republicans back in 2002. Now the Democrats openly
fight protecting infants who are born, alive, and breathing.
If there is something about the Democrat party philosophy
that insists on baby killing as a basic tenet, then it is not possible to be
a good person and be a Democrat. If any good people are still voting Democrat,
they’d better step up and change their party, or leave it for good.
