"Guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends babies over 22 weeks which survive abortion should have their hearts stopped by lethal injection but this can be a difficult procedure for doctors."
     Daily Mail, February 4.

As we've discussed a number of times, Great Britain's abortion law takes dead aim at babies up to the age of 24 weeks and then offers a loophole big enough to legitimize the execution of older babies essentially up to birth. All the child need have is a "severe foetal abnormality," which has and does include babies prenatally diagnosed with cleft palates and club feet.

With the deadly sweep this broad, it should surprise no one that a few babies will be old enough and tough enough to survive the abortionist's onslaught. Alas, equally unsurprising is the attitude of the nation's medical establishment: if they survive, kill them.

The Daily Mail noted that the startling statistics can be found in the small print of an official report of the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), commissioned by the British Government. The numbers are for hospitals in England and Wales for the year 2005.

The Daily Mail reports that 16 of the 66 survivors were 22 weeks or older. These older babies "survived between one minute and four-and-a-half hours," the Daily Mail reported, and "half lived for just over an hour."

Of the remaining 50 abortion survivors, "half survived for longer than 55 minutes, with one breathing unaided for ten hours," reported the Daily Mail.

According to CEMACH chief executive Richard Congdon, the older babies were not given lethal injections, although that is the course of action recommended by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He said the babies' deaths were "inevitable."

As we discussed Friday, almost 200,000 babies are aborted each year in Britain, with the numbers continuing to climb. Members of the British Parliament will soon debate the status of abortion law for the first time since 1990.

At a minimum, pro-lifers have sought to use the discussion to attempt to rein in the nation's laissez faire abortion law. Pro-abortionists want to make it even easier for women to abort, a.k.a. increase the number of dead babies.

This latest revelation about abortion survivors is set against a backdrop of a number of developments making pro-abortionists, if not squirm, at least shout their usual nonsense louder. To cite just the most recent, survival rates for babies born between 22 and 25 weeks rose from 32% in 1981 to 71% in 2000 at one hospital that was geared and equipped to handle their special needs.

According to the Canadian pro-life website www.lifesite.com, "CEMACH was launched in 2003 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to inquire 'into the deaths of mothers, babies and children.' NICE is the British government's bioethics think tank that publishes clinical appraisals for the National Health Service about whether particular treatments are worthwhile to pursue.  "The NICE is guided by the modern principles of utilitarian bioethics and bases its decisions primarily on whether a treatment is cost-effective. In 2005, the NICE issued guidelines that said elderly patients should be refused some treatments if doctors felt they would not be 'of benefit' because of the patient's age."

We can only hope and pray that ears will be unstopped, eyes opened, and hearts softened.

Tomorrow we will discuss in a preliminary way what happened today in "Super Tuesday."