The Wyoming House recently passed 44-16 a bill that would mandate life-saving measures for babies that are born alive after an abortion. The state Senate passed the bill earlier this year and it now has been sent to Republican Gov. Mark Gordon for his signature.
Senate File 97 requires abortionists to “take medically appropriate and reasonable steps to preserve the life and health of an infant born alive” from an abortion. Abortionists who fail to do so could be punished with up to 14 years in prison.
Infanticide by actively killing a baby is illegal in Wyoming but this legislation will protect abortion survivors from dying from a lack of basic medical care. Some lawmakers attempted to amend the bill to reduce its penalties from felony status to misdemeanor, but the amendment failed.
Abortion survivors are not “hypothetical.” Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the personal testimonies of nurses and abortion survivors themselves, provide evidence that babies survive abortions. According to the CDC, at least 143 babies were born alive after botched abortions between 2003 and 2014 in the U.S., though there likely are more.
In addition, during the preliminary criminal hearing for Liberty Counsel’s client Sandra Merritt, the undercover journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s trade in baby body parts, an expert in stem cell research testified that various studies involving baby human hearts had to have been conducted while the hearts were still beating when cut out. In other words, the babies had to have been born alive.
Wyoming’s Senate File 97 is very similar to the federal Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that would have applied nationwide. However, over the past year, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats have blocked it 80 times and have refused to schedule a hearing or sign the discharge petition for the bill. Last month, 41 U.S. Senators voted to block the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act from being brought to a final vote on the Senate floor. In a 56-41 vote, the bill failed to receive the needed three-fifths majority, or 60 senators, to overcome a Democrat-led filibuster.
More than 30,000 medical professionals from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Pediatricians, Christian Medical & Dental Associations, Catholic Medical Association and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, support the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and state, “There is no scientific or legal reason to distinguish between human beings born after an attempted abortion and human beings born after attempted live birth. In cases where the mother’s life actually is in danger in the latter half of pregnancy, there is not time for an abortion… We can, and do, save the life of the mother through delivery of an intact infant in a hospital where both the mother and her newborn can receive the care that they need. There is no medical reason to intentionally kill that fetal human being.”
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “I applaud Wyoming legislators for protecting the lives of precious babies that have survived an abortion and are fighting for life. If this protection is not implemented, the abortion provider simply backs away from the table and leaves the baby to suffer and die. We must continue the fight to make the womb a safe place once again in America,” said Staver.
