Re: Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 4292)
July 22, 2000
Dear Member of Congress:
The National Right to Life Committee urges your support
for The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (H.R. 4292). Enactment of this bill is necessary to ensure that all
infants who are born alive are treated as legal persons for purposes of
federal law.
Babies whose lungs are insufficiently developed to
permit sustained survival are often spontaneously delivered alive, and may live
for hours or days. Others are born
alive following deliveries induced for medical reasons, or following attempted
abortions. As Congressman Charles
Canady noted when he introduced the bill on April 13, "It has long been
accepted as a legal principle that infants who are born alive are persons and
are entitled to the protections of the law, and that a live birth has occurred
whenever an infant is expelled from her mother's body and displays any of
several specific signs of life -- breathing, heartbeat, and/or definite
movements of voluntary muscles. . . . But recent changes in the legal and
cultural landscape appear to have brought this well-settled principle into
question.”
Therefore, H.R. 4292 is proposed to codify (for federal law
purposes only) the traditional definition of “born alive” that is already
found in the laws of most states: complete
expulsion from the mother, accompanied by heartbeat, respiration, and/or
voluntary movements. The bill would
also codify the traditional principle that the legal term “person” and
equivalent terms “shall include every infant member of the species homo
sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”
Contrary to some misunderstandings or
misrepresentations, the bill does nothing to change the standard of care for
medical treatment of premature infants. Physicians
in most states have long operated under definitions of “born alive” or
“live birth” that are identical or nearly identical to those contained in
H.R. 4292. In a given case, two
neonatologists may disagree as to whether a given medical treatment will be
efficacious or futile, but both surely agree that they are discussing the
prognosis of a human being who has legal rights -- and if, as they argue
regarding the case, a madman enters the room and kills the baby with a hammer,
both doctors will recognize that they have witnessed a homicide.
The bill defines a child as “born alive” only if it
displays the specified vital sign(s) after “the complete expulsion or
extraction from its mother” – in other words, after pregnancy has ended.
Therefore, the bill has no application to any method of abortion.
The bill does, however, repudiate the position of those who implicitly or
explicitly argue that infants who are born alive as the result of attempted
abortions can be treated as non-persons.
It is noteworthy that the National Abortion and Reproductive
Rights Action League (NARAL), in a July 20 statement attacking the bill, said it
would “effectively grant legal personhood to a pre-viable fetus – in direct
conflict with Roe [v. Wade].” In reality, of course, Roe v. Wade dealt only with the
constitutional status of the “unborn fetus.”
There is nothing in Roe to support the claim that infants who are born
alive may be considered anything less than legal persons, regardless of
their stage of lung development (i.e., “viability”).
But apparently NARAL believes that a baby who is entirely outside the
mother and breathing can still be considered a “fetus” and a non-person, if
someone deems that infant to be “non-viable.”
At a July 20 hearing on the bill before the House
Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee, Congressman Jerrold Nadler – who
described himself “as pro-choice as anybody on Earth” – vigorously
challenged the position set forth in the NARAL statement.
He argued that under long-established legal principles, “if an abortion
is performed, or a natural birth occurred, at any age, [even] three months, and
the product of that was living outside the mother, and somebody came and shot
him, I don’t think there’s any doubt that person would be prosecuted for
murder.”
Mr. Nadler went on to suggest that the bill does “nothing
new” and therefore may be “unnecessary.”
But we believe the evidence presented to the subcommittee, and the
reaction of groups such as NARAL to the plain language of the bill, demonstrate
the necessity of nailing down the legal personhood of live-born infants before
the principle is further eroded by those who wish to expand the right to kill
even beyond the line of full birth.
Sincerely,
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director