"Born-Alive" Measure Thwarted in New Hampshire

By Dave Andrusko

Pro-abortionists in New Hampshire have for the moment thwarted what ought to have been a non-controversial piece of legislation to recognize that children who are born alive are legal persons.

On March 29, the New Hampshire House of Representatives adopted a watered-down version of sponsor Rep. Phyllis Woods's original HB 390 by a vote of 188-173.

Rep. Woods said she was "absolutely astounded that this bill has caused so much controversy," the Manchester Union Leader reported. "Why should there be any hesitation about saying a newborn baby is a person?"

A dual strategy successfully stymied the Woods bill. The definition of "born alive" - - similar to the language of 30 other states - - was mangled beyond recognition.

"It now uses very dehumanizing language," said Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC director of state legislation. "The substitute talks about a live birth being 'the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception' to hide the undeniable fact that we are talking about babies who are born-alive, however small, and however good or bad their chances for survival."

Rep. Woods's bill would have changed the law so that every place where the legal term "person" is found, it would apply to born alive infants. But beyond employing language that trivializes the unborn, the amended bill does not recognize these "products of conception" as legal persons.

Making it worse is that this vague, dehumanizing definition was dispatched to a kind of legislative limbo. It was not applied to anything - - not to laws, rules, or regulations.

Opponents, such as Democrat Rep. James Craig, said the original approach was unnecessary and filled with potential problems.

According to the Union Leader, Craig said if the original sponsors believe there are specific state laws that don't cover newborns, they should amend them. "That's the better way to do it," he said.

Balch said, "That's an intriguing suggestion." But Balch said the real source of the opposition to HB 390 is extremism.

"There are pro-abortionists so wedded to an absolutely unfettered right to abortion that they are no longer willing to stop at the border - - birth," she said.

"They're in hot pursuit of newborn infants - - children who are clearly separate [and separated] human beings - - zealous in their determination that the 'right' to abortion be acknowledged as the 'right' to a dead child."

"Ex Utero Abortions"

The resistance to New Hampshire's HB 390, "The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001," can be seen as part of the larger effort by pro-abortionists to create a new right to something they might call "ex utero abortion." This campaign began in earnest with the Supreme Court's decision last July in the case of Nebraska's law banning partial-birth abortions.

On a 5-4 vote, the High Court used Stenberg v. Carhart to announce that "abortion" included partial-birth abortion, a "procedure" in which the unborn child's entire body except for her head is dangling outside her mother's body. Stomach-turning even to many hardened pro-abortionists, this "technique" relies on plunging a pair of surgical scissors into the back of the child's head and sucking out her brains which "collapses" the skull, "facilitating" removal of the now lifeless baby.

Stenberg raised an ominous prospect. Since a child who is inches away from birth may be killed, would not the pro-abortionists begin to argue that those infants marked for abortion who somehow survive have no right to appropriate medical care, or to any care at all? That is what happened, almost immediately.

As George Will wrote in Newsweek last November,

"The federal court that overturned New Jersey's ban on partial-birth abortion cavalierly declared it 'nonsensical' and 'irrational' to believe that an infant's physical location relative to the mother has any relevance as to whether she may choose to have it killed. This pushes abortion rights beyond Roe v. Wade's framework. Roe's distinction - - now a crumbling wall against infanticide - - held that a child's legal status depended on whether the child was 'unborn' or 'born' - - that is, the status depended on the child's location in relation to the body of the mother."

New Hampshire's born-alive bill is identically worded to the federal law which passed the U.S. House but was stymied in the Senate by pro-abortion Democrats. Appearing last year before the House Constitution Subcommittee, two Illinois nurses testified that physicians at one hospital performed numerous "therapeutic abortions" employing a procedure in which the physicians used drugs to induce premature labor to deliver unborn children, many of whom were sometimes still alive. They then would stand back and allow these children to die unattended.

New Hampshire legislators responded with HB 390. But like an orchestra with a common score, assigned instruments, and blended harmonies, before you could say "back-alley abortions," the shrill attacks commenced.

The bill was about abortion, we were told. It was nothing of the kind.

The original bill defines a child as "born alive" only if the child displays specified vital sign[s] (heartbeat, respiration, and/or voluntary movement) after "the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother." That is to say, after pregnancy has ended.

Opponents complained that the proposal required a new standard of care for medical treatment of premature infants. But as Roger Stenson, executive director of the state's NRLC affiliate, Citizens for Life, explained,

"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 HB 390. In a given case, two neonatologists may disagree as to whether a given medical treatment will be efficacious or futile, but surely they would agree that they are discussing the prognosis of a human being who has legal rights."

Stenson added, "And if, as they argue the case, a madman enters the room and kills the baby with a hammer, both doctors will recognize that they have witnessed a homicide."

A different kind of hammer was lowered with the March 29 vote in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

At one level HB 390 was and is about codifying the principle that unwanted born-alive infants are to be treated the same as wanted babies of the same age. According to Stenson, this means that "babies who are so premature that they cannot live would be given comfort care, such as a blanket and moisture for their lips until they die. For those old enough to be treated (within the standards of medical care for all babies that age), HB 390 means they would be afforded that treatment."

No more, no less.

But at another level the resolution of New Hampshire's bill, as well as similar bills elsewhere, will tell us something else: whether the utter contempt for the truth that is the hallmark of the pro-death movement will prevail yet again.