A Profound Conversation on Life

(Nurse Jill Stanek and others testify before U.S. House)

July 24, 2000

Rep. Charles Canady (R-Florida) may not have anticipated the stir he would cause when he introduced the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2000 (H.R. 4292). This would establish, for purposes of federal law, the personhood of all infants born alive. In so doing, it would protect infants who survive abortion—and therefore are completely separated from their mother—by recognizing their right to equal treatment as afforded to all other persons under the law.

Rep. Canady initiated a profound new conversation on the nature and value of human life. The notorious U.S. Supreme Court Stenberg v. Carhart decision, which lifted Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion, created a gray area, forcing our nation to examine our regard of human life. “If a child born alive after a botched abortion does not receive the protection of the law,” Rep. Canady asked, “what is to prevent an abortionist from simply delivering a child and killing it?” Thus, he began the hunt for precisely where government should draw the line to preserve human life and recognize personhood.

At a House Constitution Subcommittee hearing on July 20, 2000, witnesses emotionally commented on the bill. (The Judiciary Committee passed the bill on July 26 with a 22 to 1 vote. It now moves to the Rules Committee.) They also gave insight to the greater issue at hand: How denigrating human life jeopardizes the worth of all persons. As Hadley Arkes, Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College, submitted in his testimony, “In setting in place these most elementary protections for human life, we are securing the ground for all of our rights, for the born as well as the unborn.”

Mr. Arkes argued that Canady’s bill “offers the most modest and the gentlest step that is imaginable in dealing with the question of abortion; and at the same time it is the approach that goes most deeply to the root of things.” He continued, “It … begin[s] the conversation at the place that should command the most overwhelming consensus across our political divisions: the place where we act simply to preserve the life of the child born alive, the child who survives an abortion [emphasis in original].”

Nurses Jill L. Stanek and Allison Baker testified about babies who survived abortion or were delivered early so they would die. “The goal always is to cause a pregnant woman’s cervix to open so that she will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward,” said Nurse Stanek, describing so-called “therapeutic,” or live-birth, abortion. She testified of viable babies with spina bifida and Down syndrome who undergo this procedure and are left in soiled utility closets to die.

“We look the other way and pretend that these babies aren’t human while they’re alive, but human only after they are dead,” Nurse Stanek said. “We issue these babies birth and death certificates, but it is really only the death certificate that matters. No other children in America are medically abandoned like this.”

Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor, also testified. She survived a saline abortion in 1977. “I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. Her heart-wrenching testimony silenced the packed room in the Rayburn House Office Building. “Where is your heart?” she asked the subcommittee members. She appealed to the members to search the nation’s soul and restore Godliness to their decisions.

Other witnesses, such as Dr. F. Sessions Cole and Dr. Matthew G. Hile, mistakenly thought the bill would interfere with the medical care decisions of parents and their physicians. However, Rep. Canady specified that the bill would not do this, but instead “would only insure that all born-alive infants, regardless of their age and … circumstances of their birth, are treated the same for purposes of federal law.” For example, it is not acceptable to toss an infant into a utility closet. That action would not be equal treatment.

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, clarified the definition of “born-alive” and its implications. The bill’s “definition of live birth does not restrict a physician’s prerogative to recommend that medical care regarded as futile be withheld or withdrawn.” In addition, Kenneth Thomas, an attorney with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, pointed out that the bill would have very little effect on current federal laws, including criminal laws.

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) angrily expressed her opposition to the bill. When Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) asked her opinion of when a baby has rights, she refused to answer and simply “referred [him] to Roe v. Wade.” So angry was Rep. Jones that she did not complete her prepared testimony, in which she called the bill “ill-advised and dangerous.” First, she insisted it was not necessary. However, the Stenberg decision provoked confusion as to which babies have the law’s protection.

Second, said Rep. Jones, “it unduly restricts a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy,” referring to Roe. NARAL echoed this fallacy: “Roe v. Wade clearly states that women have the right to choose prior to fetal viability. … [T]his bill … directly contradict[s] one of Roe’s basic tenets.” But the bill addresses a pregnancy that is already terminated. Pregnancy termination is not limited to abortion; giving birth also ends pregnancy. Thus, the baby’s and the woman’s circumstances are separated. The baby is now a patient deserving treatment like any other patient (i.e., not tossed in a soiled utility room, as happened at Christ Hospital).

Advocates of “abortion,” it seems, no longer consider it simply the “termination of pregnancy,” as distinctly defined by Roe. Rather, they want the right to choose the death of an unwanted child—pre-viable or viable, unborn or born. However, “nowhere did the Roe Court even hint that ‘abortion’ might refer to the termination of a born child,” as Gerard V. Bradley, professor of Law at University of Notre Dame, emphasized. “From the moment of birth on, ‘abortion’ is, according to standard medical usage, impossible. No ‘pregnancy’ remains to be terminated.”

Lastly, Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Department of Politics, Princeton University, spoke. “Even those who believe in abortion, as I do not, would draw the line at birth, if not before,” he stated, “on the ground that the physical separation of mother and child eliminates any concern that protecting the life of the child would violate the rights of her mother.” He continued, “But today … infanticide is openly defended and even put forward as itself a right. … The legitimization of infanticide constitutes a grave threat to the principle of human equality at the heart of American civil rights ideals.”

While lawmakers quibble over when life begins and when a baby becomes a “person,” we as citizens of good conscience must rise above the fray and choose to do what is noble. Regardless of what the law allows, the choice to do what is right is up to us. Let us not flippantly toss aside the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that state, respectively, we are all “created equal” and entitled to “equal protection of the laws.” Rather, let us embrace all members of our society, born and unborn, for the preservation of our great civilization.

Courtesy:

Concerned Women for America
1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 488-7000
Fax: (202) 488-0806
E-mail: [email protected]
www.cwfa.org