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Multiple faulty reasons to justify vetoing a bill to treat abortion survivors equally

Mar 30, 2020

By Dave Andrusko

This may be the single strangest veto of a pro-life bill that I have ever read.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed Senate File 97, sponsored by State Sen. Cheri Steinmetz. As NRL News Today previously reported, SF 97 requires physicians to “take medically appropriate and reasonable steps to preserve the life and health of an infant born alive” following an attempted abortion. 

Gordon’s veto is very much worth reading in its entirety. Let’s go through it.

#1. The bill “doesn’t limit abortion…” Ironically, among the typical pro-abortion laments (although it is not true) is that bills such as the federal Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act do limit abortions….somehow. 

Of course, as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) explained in many eloquently speeches in committee and on the Senate floor, this “isn’t a debate about third-trimester, or second-trimester, or first-trimester abortion.” Rather it’s “about making sure that every newborn baby has a fighting chance – whether she’s born in a labor and delivery ward or whether she’s born in an abortion clinic.” No more treatment for a baby who survives an abortion than any other newborn of the same gestational age, but no less, either.

#2. Gordon takes refuge in the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act because he writes, the law says that any baby born alive during an abortion is a “person.” Not to treat such a baby, Gordon argues, would put an abortionist  “in violation of any federal law that protects a person, human being, child, or individual.” 

But this ignores  the whole panoply of evidence that the law is ignored because there are no enforcement penalties

As NRLC has explained numerous times, in the years since the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was enacted, “evidences have multiplied that some abortion providers do not regard babies born alive during abortions as persons, and do not provide them with the types of care that would be provided to premature infants who are born spontaneously. In some cases, such born-alive infants are even subjected to overt acts of deadly violence. In 2013, Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia was convicted under state law of multiple homicides of such born-alive infants, but such a prosecution and conviction is uncommon. In some jurisdictions, local authorities seem reluctant to investigate reports of infants born alive during abortions, or to bring appropriate indictments even in cases in which the publicly reported evidence of gross neglect or overt lethal acts seems strong.”

#3. There already are laws on the books, Gordon writes, to punish abortionists who abort once a “fetus has reached viability.” Who decides “viability”? The abortionist. Moreover—again—bills such as SF 97 are not mandating “futile” measures. They say merely what you would do for a preemie born in the conventional manner you do for the abortion survivor. Finally…

#4. This law is actually counter-productive, Gordon maintains in his veto letter, because it would “eliminate the opportunity for a child to pass away in the loving arms of parents, rather it would require that a child be removed from those loving parents and placed in a situation where the child might still pass away in the midst of stressful, painful and futile efforts to resuscitate.”

Does Gov. Gordon understand the bill is about babies who survive abortions?

We can only hope the Wyoming legislature overrides Gov. Gordon’s veto.

Categories: Legislation
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