“Gianna’s Law”, named after a survivor of abortion, has just been passed by the U.S. Alabama State Senate, seeking to protect other survivors.

Named after pro-life activist Gianna Jessen, a survivor of abortion, HB 237, an Alabama “born-alive” protection bill, is set to be signed into law after being passed by the state’s House and Senate.

While post-birth abortion in the United States is illegal, in many states there is no provision in federal law against leaving a survivor to die.

Accordingly, abortionists should now be required to provide medical assistance to such children rather than insisting on infanticide through neglect. 

Protecting survivors at clinics

State Rep. Ginny Shaver (R), the Alabama bill’s sponsor, said: “There is no such thing as post-birth abortion… Think about those three words. That’s infanticide.”

Underlining the purpose and importance of her bill, Representative Shaver added:

“If there is any sign of breathing or any other sign of life… there would then exist a doctor-patient relationship between the doctor and the child so that he would be required to exercise the same degree of physical skill and care to make an effort to reasonably preserve the life and health of that child…

“That’s what it is and what my bill does is in this situation where a child survives an abortion attempt and is born alive, it would require a physician to exercise the same reasonable care to preserve the life of the child that is born alive.”

Although the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, signed into law by President George Bush, applied the definition “human being” and “person” to all newborns in 2002, the act did not apply penalties for the neglect of survivors and allowing them to die.

Survivors of abortion

In 2016 alone, in three U.S. states, 40 babies are known to have survived abortion attempts.

According to The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 143 abortion survivors died between 2003 and 2014, though it is thought that the real number is much higher. The CDC also reported that of those 143 infants, nearly 50% were alive for at least four hours, while six lived for more than a day.

In 1977, Gianna Jessen survived an abortion attempt at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Miss Jessen, who has spoken in the UK about her experience, has cerebral palsy as a result of the saline solution injected into her mother's womb in 1977.

SPUC also recently reported on the story of survivor Melissa Ohden, now in her forties, who as a baby was discarded as medical waste and left to die after surviving a termination attempt. She was burned in the womb for five days by a toxic saline solution when her mother was 7 months pregnant.

Abortion burns the humanity out of the human

SPUC’s Daniel Frampton said: “The death, chiefly through neglect, of 143 babies in the United States between 2003 and 2014 is a shocking figure that contradicts the anti-life lobby’s claim that there is ‘no need’ for ‘born-alive’ bills.

“While we can be thankful that there are survivors, such Gianna Jessen, in the U.S. and elsewhere, many babies still die through neglect – most recently, a baby boy from Blackburn, in England, who was left to die for 10 hours after surviving the abortion intended to kill him.

“As SPUC pointed out at the time, the child’s death not only exposed the barbarity of abortion, but also how utterly inhumane it made the health professionals responsible for carrying it out.

“It is a vital point that abortion, as well as killing unborn children, has a corrosive effect on the enactor and advocate of the termination – like the toxic saline solution itself, burning the humanity out of the human until nothing is left but a petrifying indifference towards the defenceless child in front of them.

“In this sense, an abortion may kill more than one soul. If it is allowed to continue, it may even destroy society itself.”

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