Democrat governors in Kansas and Arizona vetoed “born-alive” bills that would have required doctors to care for and try to save babies born following failed abortions.
The majority Republican legislatures of Kansas and Arizona had already approved the bills. The wording of the Kansas bill stipulated that those babies born after failed abortions be granted “the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life”.
However, Governor of Kansas Laura Kelly claimed that the bill was “unnecessary” and designed “to interfere in medical decisions that should remain between doctors and their patients”.
Sarah Moe of the Abortion Survivors Network rubbished Kelly’s claims. Moe’s organisation estimates that an average of 1,734 babies are born alive every year in the US.
“During the 49 and a half years of Roe v. Wade, we estimate that 85,817 infants were born alive”, she said.
In Kansas, there is still a chance that the Republican supermajority can overturn Kelly’s objection.
According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 143 abortion survivors died between 2003 and 2014, though it is argued that the number is far 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.
As reported by SPUC in 2021, Carla Lockhart MP asked the UK Department of Health and Social Care about how many babies born alive after abortion attempts had died or been provided with care. She was told that no such records were held centrally.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “The dismissal and lack of care for babies born alive after ‘botched’ abortions in the US and UK is nothing short of scandalous.
“This is where the contemptible ethic of abortion leads – to the discarding of the precious and the beautiful. The blind eye societies turn to such cases reflects the inherent inhumanity of abortion ideology.”
