Life is such a powerful force. Those who have undergone abortions and those who do them, say they often feel or sense the child flinching as if attempting to fight off the abortions tools – a
nd live.
What happens when a child does live? When the attempt at abortion fails? Wouldn’t such a child be rewarded – with life? What a David and Goliath story – unborn, helpless child triumphs over abortionist tools!
Now, for the first time chilling reports are indicating that aborted babies, who survived, are often left to die. At least 66 British babies in this report survived the abortion attempt in a recent year. All were left to die without medical aid. The NHS-funded abortions indicated that about half of the surviving children lived for an hour, while one survived ten hours breathing unaided. The report was completed by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH).
Under current British law, a child can be aborted up to 24 weeks gestation if there are no “abnormalities” detected. A child judged to be abnormal may be legally killed up to the time of natural birth. Once a child slated for death by abortion is born alive, no medical help is typically offered him. The child is usually set aside to die. However, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that surviving babies more than 22 weeks old be killed by lethal injection. Incredible! It is only slightly encouraging to find a report by The Daily Telegraph that indicates that this instruction to murder a living child “can be a difficult procedure for doctors”.
The CEMACH Prenatal Mortality data reveals that 16 surviving babies were more than 22 weeks old and 50 were under that age. This is the first acknowledgement by a government body that children survive abortion and are left to die on their own. But it is not the first time such incidents have been informally reported.
Dr. Trevor Stammers is a senior lecturer at St. George’s University Hospital in London. He comments, “Despite all attempts at emotional neutrality, the heart does not work that way when you get a baby in front of you that colleagues on another floor of the same building would be trying to keep alive.”
Delegates at a recent British Medical Association annual conference voted 65% in favor offering children born alive after an attempted abortion the same care and treatment as other infants.
In the light of the disturbing CEMACH report, the British Association of Prenatal Medicine is considering new guidelines.
Unfortunately, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is also inquiring “into the deaths of mothers, babies and children.” NICE is the British government’s bioethics think tank. It publishes clinical appraisals about whether particular treatments are worthwhile to pursue, but NICE is guided by the modern principles of utilitarian bioethics and bases its decisions on the cost-effectiveness of a procedure. For example, NICE recently issued guidelines that gave permission to deny the elderly some treatments. Doctors were to weigh the age of the patient with the cost of the procedure.
In 2005, President Bush signed into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act that ensures any infant fully born that shows signs of life is considered a human person entitled to the full protection of the law. The bill was passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress after legislators heard testimony of children being left to die in abortion facilities.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
New Study Finds Some Late-Term Abortion Babies Born Live at Only 18 Weeks
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/aug/05080804.html