There hasn’t been much attention paid to a bill, H.R. 4292, approved on July 26 by the House Judiciary Committee. The vote was 22-10. Titled the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2000, the bill – if enacted into law –
There hasn’t been much attention paid to a bill, H.R. 4292, approved on July
26 by the House Judiciary Committee. The vote was 22-10. Titled the Born-Alive
Infants Protection Act of 2000, the bill – if enacted into law – would, as the
Congressional Quarterly reported, “prevent the killing of infants who are born
alive accidentally or during an attempted abortion.”
The bill would apply,
in federal law, to any infant “completely expelled or extracted from the
mother’s body – displaying any of several specific signs of life: breathing,
heartbeat and/or definite movements of voluntary muscles.” This could occur at
any stage of the pregnancy, whether or not the infant’s lung development “is
believed to be, or is in fact, sufficient to permit long-term survival.”
For example, “many infants are born alive at 20 to 22 weeks and survive for
hours. … Infants are also born alive at 23 and 24 weeks and have a 39 percent
and 54 percent chance for survival.”
The bill’s sponsor, Republican
Charles Canady of Florida, notes that this act would state what is already a
principle of existing law in 41 states and the District of Columbia: “Infants
who are born alive are persons under the Constitution, entitled to the
protection of the laws.”
In Roe vs. Wade, which established the right to
an abortion, Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun also pointed out that once
born, an infant is indeed a person under the Constitution.
Why is such a
law re-establishing so basic a legal principle needed now? Because, says
Canady, of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning a Nebraska statue
banning partial-birth abortion – in which an infant is partially extracted from
the mother. Clarification is needed, Canady continued, to make it clear that an
infant cannot be killed once he or she is fully outside the mother’s body.
Testifying for the bill, Jill L. Stanek, a registered nurse, told of infants
born alive during abortions who are put aside until they die. She cited “a live
aborted baby who was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room
wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown into the
garbage, and when they were later going through the trash to find the baby, the
baby fell out of the towel and onto the floor.”
Others testified against
the bill, maintaining that the Born-Alive Protection Act violates Roe vs. Wade
because it defines the viability of the fetus by applying it to all stages of
prenatal development. Viability means that the fetus is sufficiently developed
to live outside the uterus.
Judiciary Committee member Jerrold Nadler, a
New York Democrat, rebutted the opponents and supported the bill, even though
he described himself as being “as pro-choice as anybody on Earth.”
I can
attest to that, because Nadler represents the district where I live in New
York. Nadler said unequivocally that, under long-established legal principles,
“if an abortion is performed, or a natural birth occurred, at any age, even
three months, and the product of that was living outside the mother, and
somebody came and shot him, I don’t think there’s any doubt that person would
be prosecuted for murder.”
Yet the National Abortion and Reproductive
Action League (NARAL) – which often calls pro-lifers “extremists,” as Al Gore
does – furiously objected to the bill. NARAL accuses “anti-choice lawmakers”
(Nadler?) of making fetuses into persons “at any stage of development, thereby
directly contradicting one of Roe’s basic tenets.”
Helen Alvare, formerly
with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, responded: “Abortion
advocates now insist that the decision to kill a fully born infant, at any
stage of development, is a personal and private medical decision.” NARAL says
the killing is up to the mother and the physician at any stage.
The
Born-Alive Infant Protection Act is likely to pass the House, but its prospects
in the Senate are uncertain. Under Senate rules, a companion born-alive infant
bill can be delayed until it dies, or it can be filibustered. Senators who are
for only one choice could well decide to deny a human being, wholly removed
from his or her mother’s body, the right to stay alive as a person under the
Constitution.
Says Helen Alvare: “The pro-life community predicted that
failure to stop partial-birth abortion would lead to infanticide. Now, NARAL is
arguing for precisely that.”
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned
authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.
