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CV NEWS FEED // National Right to Life (NRLC) has released a report documenting cases of infanticide committed against babies born alive following an attempted abortion.
The report, Checking the Fact-Checkers: “After-Birth” Abortions, Modern Infanticide: Abandoning Babies to Die, was released September 24 at a congressional briefing on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
An NRLC press release stated, “The document comes at a crucial time when pro-abortion groups have promoted false narratives about babies who are born alive during abortions.”
“The abortion industry and its sympathizers want to make this about abortion. It’s not. It’s about infanticide,” NRLC President Carol Tobias said in the release. “It is barbaric that newborns who have the temerity to survive an abortion are considered the ‘dreaded complication’ by abortionists. The baby who survives an abortion deserves the full protection of the law.”
Tobias said in an email to CatholicVote that the organization believes Americans should be aware that some babies survive abortion.
“As several states have changed, or are attempting to change their abortion laws, allowing abortions later into pregnancy, the chance of a baby surviving the abortion becomes more likely,” Tobias stated, later adding, “These are living, breathing babies who deserve the same care and treatment as any other baby born at the same gestational age.”
In the special report, NRLC notes that despite claims both the press and pro-abortion advocates make to the contrary, “the documentation of babies born during or following an abortion procedure is extensive.”
Detailing some of the evidence, the report states:
In 1981, Dr. Willard Cates, the chief of abortion statistics for the Centers for Disease Control at the time, estimated that 400 to 500 live births following abortions occurred every year.
Between 2003 and 2014, the Centers for Disease Control reported 588 infant deaths described as, “termination of pregnancy affecting fetus and newborn” with 143 deaths clearly resulting from a live birth following an abortion. In 2019, it was found that since the year 2000, over 1000 infants were born alive following failed abortions in Canada. In Australia, between 2005 and 2015, there were 204 live births following abortions. Despite assertions otherwise, reporting data shows that live births do occur and the CDC recognizes that here in the U.S., the number of live births following an abortion is probably higher than what is reported.
Over 700 abortion survivors have been located today, according to the Abortion Survivors Network, founded by abortion survivor Melissa Ohden.
In an egregious case exposed in 2010, late term abortionist Kermit Gosnell was routinely killing babies by delivering them alive and then severing their spinal cords with scissors. The NRLC report documents the details:
In 2010, investigators executed search warrants at the abortion facility of Kermit Gosnell on suspicion of illegal prescription drug activity. But investigators found something even more shocking: Gosnell routinely delivered live babies and then ended their lives by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The Grand Jury Report estimates hundreds of babies met similar fates at Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion center. By April 2013, abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted on three counts of murder in the deaths of 3 newborn babies.
More recently, during vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s tenure in office as governor of Minnesota, eight babies died after being born alive following an abortion, according to the report. All were denied life-saving care.
As NRLC notes, on August 6, 2024, John Solomon reported in Just the News,
In Walz’s state and on his watch, five infants were “born alive”” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none was provided life-saving care though two got “comfort care,” the Minnesota Department of Health reported on July 1, 2022. Three other infants were “born alive” during abortions in 2019, Walz’s first year as governor, and they too perished without life-saving care, according to a July 1, 2020 report from the same state agency.
Solomon observed that although Minnesota had been one of only a few states to require such public reporting on babies born alive following an attempted abortion, Walz worked with a Democrat-controlled Legislature to eliminate both the reporting requirement and the legal obligation for medical professionals to provide such infants life-saving care.
NRLC also drew attention in its report to the infamous remarks former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam made in an interview with news radio WTOP regarding babies born alive following a failed abortion. Northam admitted doctors would decide whether to provide life-saving care for the baby based on the mother’s wishes, thereby leaving open the possibility that such care could be denied.
When questioned concerning a pro-abortion bill introduced into the Virginia legislature, Northam said, “…if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother…”
NRLC also included recently published direct testimony from abortionists admitting that the attempt to kill the baby by stopping its heart before abortion “prevents the infrequent but serious occurrence of unanticipated expulsion of a fetus with cardiorespiratory activity [a baby breathing and with a heartbeat].”
The “Born-Alive Infant Protection Act,” which was signed into law by President George Bush in 2002, recognizes that any baby born alive, including any born following an attempted abortion, is legally a human person and therefore subject to the protection of law. However, the law does not impose penalties on medical professionals who violate the law.
