All but two House Democrats opposed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would mandate that abortion-surviving newborns be shown the ‘same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence’ as would be given following an intended birth.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- The U.S. House of Representatives voted 217-204 on Thursday to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (BAASPA) to strengthen federal protection from infanticide, demonstrating half of Congress’s support while the Senate continues to fail to send it to the president’s desk.
BAASPA would mandate that abortion-surviving newborns be shown the “same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence” as would be given following an intended birth and then be “immediately transported and admitted to a hospital.” Violating physicians would face up to five years in prison, and those who go beyond willful negligence and commit an “overt act” to kill the newborn would be punished under the existing federal murder statute.
READ: All Senate Democrats vote against bill to criminalize infanticide
Congress technically banned infanticide nationwide unanimously two decades ago with the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA). But that bill lacked penalties or enforcement mechanisms, which BAASPA is meant to correct.
The bill passed the Republican-controlled House without difficulty, but despite Republicans holding the Senate as well, their majority was not large enough to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold for most types of legislation. Every Senate Democrat opposed it; all but two House Democrats opposed it (Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas voted yes; Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas voted present). The Trump administration, which took a number of pro-life moves in its first week, had not commented on the bill.
Democrats and the abortion lobby attempt to justify their opposition to BAASPA by claiming that existing law is sufficient to make infanticide virtually nonexistent. In reality, however, “[a]lthough the United States fails to record reliable data on abortion survivors, we have estimated, through Canadian government extrapolations, that 1,734 infants are born alive after a failed abortion procedure every year in the United States,” says the Abortion Survivors Network. “In other words, about 2 out of every 1,000 abortions result in a live birth. After 49.5 years of Roe v Wade, 85,817 babies lived through an abortion procedure.”
In September 2024, the Family Research Council (FRC) wrote, “State-level abortion reporting statistics from nine states show that at least 277 infants have survived abortion since 2006.” Only eight states require reporting such data, and there are no federal reporting requirements on the subject, guaranteeing the real number is higher. Several former abortion industry insiders and policy scholars have told Congress or admitted under oath that infanticide after failed abortions happens beyond the notice of official numbers.
As of September 2024, only 18 states have laws requiring medical care for infants delivered alive after attempted abortions, according to FRC, leaving abortionists free to commit infanticide in a majority of the country.
