The following article appeared in the April 14th print edition of the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle. It can also be found online here.
Our country was founded on the notion that certain truths are inviolable and rights are inalienable.
So, how is that the right to life can be granted to some children, but not others?
We ponder this as Republicans rally to pass legislation designed to protect children who are born alive during botched abortions: sensibly named the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Without immediate care, infants cannot survive. This law would compel medical providers to treat these babies.
Surely, no doctor would allow such a thing to happen, right? Yet, Virginia’s current governor Ralph Northam, who before being elected to his office worked at a children’s hospital as a pediatrician, explained on a radio station broadcasting in the nation’s capital what would happen to an infant born during a botched abortion under his care: “The infant would be kept comfortable … and then a discussion would ensue.”
There are no federal abortion reporting requirements, so we do not know how many infants suffer this fate. But we do know that the CDC did document at least 143 infants died after being born alive during an abortion procedure between 2003 and 2014.
Today, only six states require care for children born under these circumstances. Tennessee is not one of them. To prohibit it nationwide, we must pass a federal law.
In the Republican-led Senate, the measure failed to meet the 60-vote threshold needed for passage. It failed 53-44. In the Democrat-led House, the bill has not yet been considered. Republicans are trying to force a vote on it by passing around a discharge petition and urging their Democrat colleagues to sign it. 218 signatures are required to vote on the bill. There are only 197 Republicans, and only two Democrats have signed it thus far.
To those lawmakers still deliberating, we ask you to consider the personal accounts of these two abortion survivors.
Gianna Jessen had been in the womb seven months before her mother went to Planned Parenthood to have a late-term saline abortion. In this procedure, a saline solution burns an unborn child inside and out for over an hour until their demise. The mother then delivers her dead child the next day. Remarkably, Gianna survived. She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy due to the abortion attempt, but today she only suffers from a small limp.
Like Gianna, Melissa Ohden was born after her mother had a saline abortion. She had been in her mother’s womb for seven months before being born. Today, she is a pro-life advocate with a master’s degree in social work and the founder of the Abortion Survivors Network.
Critics may say that saline abortions rarely happen anymore. It’s true – they’ve been replaced with another method called dilation and extraction, where abortion doctors brutally dismember a child limb from limb and vacuum up the baby’s remains as the mother labors and delivers the body parts. We should ban that too. And despite new methods, babies are still surviving abortions: In 2017, Florida reported that 11 babies were born alive during abortions in their state alone.
Doctors are charged to protect and defend life. OB/GYNs, in particular, are attracted to their field by the incredible experience of bringing life into this world. Saving babies’ lives should not even be a debate. We urge Congress to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act immediately.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Keenan is a professor and the director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. U.S. Rep. Mark Green, M.D., is a freshman member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
