Many of you have participated in a campaign to contact your Congressional Representative to encourage them to allow a vote on the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act (H.R. 962)—we were overwhelmed and grateful for the high participation from intercessors. As of Friday morning’s count, we had nearly 6,000 emails sent to House members to share their prayers and to advocate for allowing a vote on the House floor. House members certainly felt the impact of your emails and your prayers.  Thank you!

We began receiving emails from intercessors sharing the responses from their Congressional representatives. As we looked at the responses from multiple states across the nation, the message was the same talking points, and, unfortunately, it was misinformation.  We wanted to set the record straight with some facts, as well as some points you can share with your Congressman or woman in a return email if you choose to send one.  We relied on some valuable information from The Heritage Foundation:

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It is an undeniable matter of public record that babies can be born alive following an abortion procedure. The [original 2002 Act, referred to as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, or BAIPA] recognizes these babies as persons under federal law, but the 2002 Act does not provide adequate protections for these babies or establish specific requirements of care on practitioners.

Because current federal law is insufficient, policymakers have proposed [a new act that further protects survivors of abortion known as] the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act [HR962]. Recognizing that an infant is a “person” regardless of the circumstances of his or her birth, the bill would augment current law to:

• Require that health care practitioners “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of a child” born alive following an abortion as the practitioner “would render to any other child born alive”; [meaning that the comfort rooms you may have heard about would no longer be legal or accepted as practice.]
• Require that health care practitioners “ensure that the child born alive is immediately transported and admitted to a hospital”;
• Require practitioners and hospital, physician’s office, and abortion clinic employees to report violations;
• Establish criminal penalties (fines and/or imprisonment) for failure to comply; and
• Bar prosecution of the mother of the child born alive and provide her with civil remedies to obtain relief against any person who committed the violation.

The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act provides desperately needed protections for the most vulnerable and innocent members of society. Passing legislation to protect living babies from infanticide should not be remotely controversial. Roughly half the states currently provide some degree of protection for these babies under state law, but many do not—including states with extremely permissive abortion laws, such as California.

Despite unfounded and baseless claims to the contrary, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act does not restrict a woman’s access to abortion. It simply ensures that a living newborn infant, regardless of the circumstances of the child’s birth or whether he/she was “wanted” or not, receives proper medical care.

Hearing what atrocities are being committed in “comfort rooms” across the nation (the term for a room where babies who are born during the abortion process are placed to die without medical intervention or attention from medical professionals) it is clear that the 2002 Born Alive Act that many of these liberal talking points are referring to, is not enough. These lives deserve to be treated with dignity, medical care, and legal protection, as any human born should be. We encourage you now to set the record straight wherever you may hear it being misconstrued or falsely reported—the protection of life is in our hands!

Watch the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act hearing for more information about this Act, and the people who are working to protect the lives of these children.

(Article by Kris Kubal, IFA Staff.)