Sen. James Lankford (R-OH) reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in the U.S. Senate Thursday, in hopes of securing a vote to enforce federal infanticide prohibition early in the upcoming Trump presidency.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- Republican Sen. James Lankford (OH) reintroduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (BAASPA) in the U.S. Senate Thursday, in hopes of securing a vote to enforce infanticide prohibition early in the upcoming Trump presidency.
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.
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.
“No child should be denied medical care simply because they are ‘unwanted,’” Lankford said. “Today, if an abortion procedure fails and a child is born alive, doctors can just ignore the crying baby on the table and watch them slowly die of neglect. That’s not an abortion, that’s infanticide.”
Despite letting BAIPA become law unchallenged in 2002, Democrats have since grown far more extreme on abortion, and have consistently voted against BAASPA over the past decade. Republicans now control both chambers of Congress, but would need to convince a handful of Senate Democrats to cross the aisle to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Another question mark is returning President Donald Trump, who in this past election cycle dramatically retreated from the pro-life record of his first term, and now says he opposes federal abortion restrictions and wants the practice’s legality decided on a state-by-state basis. Both Trump and his incoming Vice President J.D. Vance have also criticized Democrats for their absolutism on the issue, however, including their defense of infanticide, which pro-lifers hope means Trump would at least be open to signing infanticide legislation.
Democrats and the abortion lobby 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.
