The Kentucky Senate overwhelming supported a bill Monday to protect newborn babies who survive abortions from infanticide.
Kentucky Senate Bill 9, sponsored by state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, passed 32-0 and now moves to the House for consideration, the AP reports. Only one senator abstained from voting, Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, according to Courthouse News.
The bill would require “reasonable life-saving and life-sustaining” medical care to be provided to infants who are born alive after failed abortions. Medical professionals who violate the measure could face criminal penalties and have their licenses revoked.
“Who can dispute that that’s a human life?” Westerfield said. “It’s outside the womb. It’s alive. Who would advocate for it to be killed?”
On Monday, he told the Senate that a New York law allowing unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth is troubling, according to the report. He also expressed concerns about Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam defending infanticide last year during a radio interview.
Westerfield said his measure would prevent babies from being left to die if they survive an abortion. He said his bill would “prevent it ever happening” in Kentucky.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky and Planned Parenthood are fighting against the legislation. They claim it is unnecessary, and it is an underhanded attack on abortion.
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“[B]ills like SB 9 perpetuate myths and lies about abortion care, the patients who receive this care, and the doctors who provide this care,” the ACLU said in a statement. “Bills like SB9 build on each other and chip at abortion access bit by bit to push abortion completely out of reach.”
When the Kentucky legislature considered the bill last year, Planned Parenthood quickly lashed out against it, telling the local news that it is nothing more than “inflammatory political rhetoric.” The abortion chain’s spokesperson Tamarra Wieder even claimed “there is no such thing” as an abortion up to birth and the problem does not exist – contradicting numerous personal testimonies as well as Centers for Disease Control data.
Previously, abortion survivor Claire Culwell testified before Kentucky lawmakers about another pro-life bill that would ban abortions after an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable. She and other abortion survivors like Melissa Ohden and Gianna Jessen are living proof that babies sometimes do survive abortions.
Government health data indicates that at least 40 babies were born alive in abortions in just three states between 2016 and 2018. Researchers estimate that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of babies have survived abortions over the past several decades, but many states do not keep track of abortion survivors.
Reports by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also indicate that there are infants born alive after botched abortions in the U.S. According to Congressional testimony:
Data that the CDC collects also confirms babies are born alive after attempted abortions. Between the years 2003 and 2014 there were somewhere between 376 and 588 infant deaths under the medical code P96.4 which keeps track of babies born alive after a “termination of pregnancy.”
The CDC concluded that of the 588 babies, 143 were “definitively” born alive after an attempted abortion and they lived from minutes to one or more days, with 48% of the babies living between one to four hours. It also admitted that it’s possible the number is an underestimate (B).
Westerfield’s bill is similar to federal legislation that pro-abortion Democrats blocked in the U.S. House. Demonstrating their loyalty to the billion-dollar abortion industry, Democrats blocked the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act 80 times last year. The bill requires abortionists to provide the same basic medical care to an infant born alive after a failed abortion that a doctor would to any other infant born at that stage of pregnancy.
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Author: Micaiah Bilger
