One of the more viral moments from Tuesday night’s debate was when moderator Linsey Davis pointed out, correctly, that there is no state in which killing a newborn baby is legal.
Now, if I were a very sincere person who opposed abortion due to a great love of babies, I would find that to be an incredible relief. I would celebrate such news, despite the fact that it should not be news to anybody, as it has always been very obviously illegal everywhere.
But Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America was not happy about it at all, and very much wants to spread the word that it is in fact (not in fact) totally legal to kill a baby after giving birth to it, in case anyone wanted to give it a shot. They wrote a letter to ABC News to issue a “swift correction” and also to meet with “abortion survivors” it would be impossible to meet with had they actually been killed after they were born.
“This is 100% inaccurate. Her statement tragically ignores the reality of babies who survive failed, late-term abortions but are denied basic medical care and left to die,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in the letter.
Dannenfelser then went on to cite multiple statistics, none of which suggest that anyone is going around legally killing newborn babies, including those “born alive” after an abortion.
Like this one!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 2003 and 2014, around 143 babies died after being born alive following failed abortions. The CDC admits that this sobering statistic likely undercuts the actual number. It also fails to account for those babies who survive an abortion and live.
If the issue is that, supposedly, babies are surviving abortions and then being killed or left to die, then why are they talking about those who survive abortion and live? What sense does that make?
But just to be clear, that data doesn’t say what they think it says, even remotely.
Via FactCheck.Org:
The CDC notes that the 143 number could be an underestimate of induced terminations of pregnancies. In looking at the data, the CDC found some cases where it was unclear whether a pregnancy termination was induced or spontaneous. In such cases, if congenital anomalies and maternal complications also were involved, the CDC assumed those were spontaneous terminations, due to the “strong association between severe congenital anomalies or maternal complications and premature labor and birth.” In other words, the CDC assumed such cases were premature labor as opposed to a decision to induce labor or end the pregnancy.
So those were not “abortions,” they were instances in which women went into premature labor or had to have labor induced for some reason and the child died after being born — which is sad, but not remotely surprising information. Unfortunately, that is a thing that can happen in those circumstances.
There is nowhere in the United States (or anywhere else that I can think of) where it is legal to kill a newborn baby. That being said, there are instances in which lifesaving interventions are not the standard of care — instances in which there is no chance for survival and the interventions will cause the child pain.
We all understand that it’s a better story for Dannenfelser and others if the people they are fighting are people who just blindly want to kill babies for the sheer thrill of it. They’d certainly seem like they have a better case. But until they can point to even one freaking specific instance, ever, of a baby being born alive either during an abortion or not and then either being killed or specifically not given life-saving care by a doctor, in which no one was prosecuted, then they do not have a case. And they’re never going to have that, because, again, infanticide is very much illegal.
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