UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital excels at saving babies born prematurely

 

The UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital is using the chart above to promote their neonatal care unit. The hospital excels at saving babies born prematurely. Iowans for LIFE applauds their success at boosting survival rates of babies born at even 22 weeks. It shows that viability isn’t a legitimate marker to determine personhood. Let’s explore the issue in a Q & A format:

When is a baby in the womb viable? The age of viability keeps changing thanks to medical advances. When Roe was decided, the age of viability was 28 weeks; today, it is 24 and in some cases, it is even less, as the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital proves.

Is there really any distinction between a 24 week old human being in 2018 compared to one in 1973?  No, there’s not. It takes a leap of faith to think otherwise, but that is the leap of faith abortion advocates make. If you think about it, a human being is not viable for a number of years after birth. They will die of hunger or exposure without the intervention of their mother and father.

By the same token, human beings in a coma or afflicted by dementia or other ailments are not viable without intervention. Viability is not a rational or moral standard for defining human dignity.

Ok, but be honest, no doctor is killing babies once they are viable, right? Sadly, wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 5597 abortions took place in the U.S. when the unborn person was 21 weeks or later. These numbers are for 2015 and include data from only forty states. Some states, such as California, don’t collect this data, so the numbers are actually much higher. Here in Iowa, nine abortions took place when the unborn person was 21 weeks or older.

Ok, but “no doctor is killing babies once they are born!” Right? Tragically, wrong. Dr. Kermit Gosnell is the most notorious example. Prosecutors believed Dr. Gosnell killed hundreds of newborns who survived his late term abortion procedures. He was ultimately charged with seven counts, convicted on three of them, and is serving a life term in prison without the possibility of parole.

That’s but one example. Can you name one other? As you might guess, abortionists don’t like to admit their “failures.” Their job is to kill the baby in the womb, even if that baby is on the cusp of being born. So statistics are spotty. Nonetheless, data from the Centers for Disease Control identify 362 deaths to babies that initially survived an abortion for the ten year period beginning in 2001.

What happens if a baby survives her abortion? Watch the undercover video below of a conversation between a Washington DC abortion doctor and a pregnant woman. She pointedly asked what happens if the baby survives the abortion. His response:

“I mean, technically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But, you know, it probably wouldn’t. It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.” [Emphasis ours.]

Watch the entire unguarded conversation:

Now surely a baby that survives an abortion is going to die anyway, right? Not according to the human abortionist in the video above. He said:

“When you have a pregnancy that is 23, 24 weeks, if you’re, you know, extra — if you — if you do everything possible to help it survive, you know, there’s a — maybe 20 to 30 percent chance that it would survive. If you don’t do anything, then, you know, the chances are much, much less.”

If the baby survives the abortion, is she a person? According to the abortionist in the video above, yes. In discussing what would happen to the baby who survived the abortion, he compared her to a terminal patient:

“Yeah. It would be, you know, uh — a person that would be — a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say … that had cancer. You know? You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive.”

Isn’t there already a law on the books protecting babies that survive an attempted abortion? Yes. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was passed unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. It clearly defines the surviving baby as a person, as did the abortionist in the video above. That’s why Dr. Gosnell went to jail: he was convicted of killing three persons who survived their abortions.

So why do Republicans want to pass the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act?” As demonstrated above, babies die who survive an abortion. Why do they die? Oftentimes it is neglect. The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act requires that proactive medical care be provided to these infants in an effort to save their lives. Even more, it imposes criminal consequences on medical providers (but not mothers) who don’t.

What is the position of Democrats on this proposed legislation? They universally oppose it. Every single Democratic candidate for president opposes it.

Why? Democrats’ position on abortion has evolved since Bill Clinton ran for president. His position, and that of his party back in the 1990s, was that abortion should be “safe, rare, but legal.”

Today’s Democrats aren’t interested in rare.

They are hard at work removing any regulation on human abortion, including right up to the minute of delivery. Watch the video below as a Democratic member of the Delaware House of Delegates is quizzed on the details of a late term abortion bill promoted by her party:

As demonstrated earlier, babies sometimes survive late term abortion. The Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, defends late term abortion. He was honest in admitting that those babies could be left to die if that was the will of the mother:

“There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s 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.” [Emphasis ours.]

Does the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act outlaw abortion? No.

Don’t comprehensive born-alive protections already exist at the state level? No. Only about half the states provide some degree of protection.

To summarize:

• Yes, babies are aborted in the womb after viability.
• Yes, babies have been killed who survived an abortion.
• Yes, babies have been left to die after surviving an abortion.
• Yes, Democratic politicians oppose legislation to protect these unborn persons after viability … and even after birth.

We applaud the U of I hospital’s remarkable survival rates for babies born prematurely.

[Iowans for LIFE vigorously defends the dignity of human life in the public square. Help us continue our educational outreach by donating today.]