By Liz Townsend
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) called for proper medical treatment to be given to babies who survive abortion attempts.
Sixty-five percent of the attendees at the BMA's annual conference in Llandudno, North Wales, voted for a resolution July 1 that demanded that "babies born alive as a result of termination of pregnancy procedures receive the full neonatal care as that available to other babies," according to The Herald & Times.
Supporters of the resolution said that there have been several cases in recent years where babies who were born alive after abortion attempts were left to die without medical care, The Herald & Times reported. "We have a duty to protect the fundamental human rights of a baby once it is considered living," Ib Adedugbe, a medical student, told the conference. "In one instance, a terminated baby lived unsustained without even life support for three days."
The chairman of the BMA's medical ethics committee, Michael Wilks, told Press Association News that existing guidelines call for medical treatment to be given to abortion survivors.
"The guidance is OK, but it doesn't seem to be preventing these cases from happening," Bryony Dunning-Davis, a supporter of the resolution, told BBC News. "That suggests they aren't enough."
Pro-lifers applauded the resolution, but criticized a medical profession that would need a reminder that it should give treatment to a human being in need. "It is scarcely credible that this issue had to be voted on at all and that one-third of the doctors present voted against the motion," Nuala Scarisbrick, trustee of British pro-life group LIFE, said in a statement. "How the medical profession has been corrupted by abortionism!"
Scarisbrick cited Adedugbe's statement at the BMA conference that the abortion survivors should be protected because "they are alive so they have every human right."
"Exactly," Scarisbrick said. "And if being alive carries with it the right to life - - as it does - - any abortion at any age is violation of human rights."