If a baby is born alive after a failed abortion, should he or she be entitled to the same medical care that would be provided to any other child?
If any such baby is clearly non-viable and has no chance of survival, should he or she be provided with comforts such as pain relief?
These questions and others like them have been raised in two parliaments in recent weeks.
In Queensland, there is currently a parliamentary inquiry into a bill that would clarify that a medical practitioner owes the same duty to provide medical care and treatment to a baby born as a result of a failed abortion as the practitioner would to any other baby born.
In other words, the bill would require that any baby born alive receives an equal amount of medical care, irrespective of whether or not it was “wanted” by its parents.
The horror of the “babies born alive” phenomenon was made clear a couple of weeks ago, when midwife Louise Adsett appeared before the Queensland inquiry. She gave testimony of babies born alive after abortion surviving from anywhere between two minutes to five hours.
However, these babies are not given the same care as “wanted” children. Adsett spoke of babies being placed into witches’ hats or kidney dishes and immediately removed from the birthing suite at the request of the parents, left to die alone and uncomforted.
While some argue that these cases are rare and so the legislation unnecessary, Queensland Health’s own records show an average of one child born alive following abortion each week. In 2022, 13 babies younger than 20 weeks’ gestation were born alive after a failed abortion, 35 babies between 20 to 28 weeks’ gestation, and one baby older than 28 weeks.
That’s one child each week, in Queensland alone, who is at least at risk of suffering the fate Adsett described.
Others—including the Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union—try to draw a distinction between showing “signs of life” and viability, suggesting that a baby that shows signs of life at birth will still most likely die, irrespective of what treatment is given.
Be that as it may, Queensland law contains a positive duty to provide basic care to animals, including prenatal or pre-hatched animals in the last half of their gestational period, by providing things such as food and water, treatment of disease or injury and appropriate handling and imposes penalties of up to $48,390 or one year imprisonment for a breach of this duty. Put another way, Queensland law currently requires a lesser standard of care to be provided to babies than to animals of the same gestational age.
On the back Adsett’s testimony, Senator Ralph Babet sought to pass an urgency motion through the Commonwealth Senate, asking for the Senate to note that “babies born alive as a failed abortion deserve care.” The motion was defeated, 32 votes to 18.
On the one hand, it’s difficult to comprehend how the provision of basic care and comfort to young infants, even if they have no chance of survival due to their early birth or other defects, is controversial. On the other hand, the reason behind the feverish opposition is quite easy to understand.
Anti-life activists and MPs are so ideologically addicted to unfettered abortion access and the dehumanisation of babies in the womb that they are willing to reject the humanity of certain babies outside the womb as well.
If anti-lifers accept that babies born alive after a failed abortion are able to feel pain and should be given pain relief and other care, then implicit in that is the fact that babies inside the womb are similarly able to feel pain.
At an even more fundamental level, if anti-lifers accept that there are babies born alive after failed abortions, they must also accept that babies are aborted who would be capable of being born alive.
Acceptance of these facts would chip away at the edifice of the abortion industry and the narrative that it is not a baby being killed, but a “clump of cells” or a “non-viable” foetus that is incapable of feeling pain.
The big fear of these anti-lifers is that these laws will be an incremental step to placing limits on late-term abortions in this country. Please God, they are right.