The Born Alive Protection Act Is More Needed Than People Realize

Providing legal protections to infants born alive after failed abortion has once again become a topic of debate as legislators are speaking out for and against the currently proposed measures that would require doctors to provide care to infants born alive after a failed abortion. Currently, a number of states in America have no legal protections for infants born alive during an abortion. Abortion supporters are claiming that such a measure is unnecessary because there simply aren't any infants being born alive as a result of an abortion, but we know based on expert provider testimony and abortion court case evidence that these protections are far more needed than the public knows.

According to the CDC, of the 619,591 reported abortions in 2018, only 6,195 of them were performed after the 21st week of pregnancy; a point at which preterm infants have been recorded as surviving outside the womb. If we are to focus solely on the 6,195 abortions being performed after 21 weeks gestation, there is a statistical possibility for more than 619 of those viable infants to be born alive.

Abortions performed in this late stage of pregnancy typically involve a demise induction method using Digoxin. Digoxin is a heart medication intended for adults that abortion providers use for the off-label purpose of causing the death of an unborn baby by inducing cardiac arrest. The woman is then induced to labor and delivers her stillborn baby. What abortion supporters do not like to point out is that according to abortion consent forms and expert witness testimony Digoxin has a failure rate of 5-15% and will fail to cause the death of the baby before delivery in those cases.

A Texas district court ruled based on expert abortion provider Mark Nichols' testimony that Digoxin abortions have an approximate failure rate of 10%. It also found that Digoxin increases the risk of inducing the spontaneous delivery of a fetus, as well as increasing a woman's risk of infection by six times. All facts led to the conclusion that demise induction abortions are too risky to be performed in Texas when outside of a hospital or hospital-like setting that is equipped to treat infants born alive.

Shelley Sella, a well-known later-term abortionist, testified that "Ninety (90) percent of the late-term abortions done in America are performed in 4 states." Curtis Boyd's Albuquerque New Mexico facility, Southwestern Women's Options, sees up to 20 women a week for elective late-stage abortions. They go as far as to advertise these 2-4 day outpatient induction abortions on their website. Considering S.W.O. performs approximately 780-1040 post-20-week abortions per year using Digoxin, it is statistically accurate to estimate that approximately 91 infants per year are delivered alive at Curtis Boyd's facility alone. Southwestern Women's Options is a non-reporting facility that is not required to report these events, which clearly contributes to the false notion that infants aren't born alive in abortion procedures.

In addition to the lack of accurate reporting, there is a deeper and far more sinister explanation of why we don't have more confirmed hard proof of these born alive abortion experiences. As has been learned from the subpoenaed medical records of multiple plaintiffs suing Curtis Boyd for abortion malpractice and wrongful death, the women who undergo these induction abortions are so heavily dosed with mixtures of Oxycodone, Fentanyl, and Versed that they cannot even remember if their baby was born alive or dead. Defenders of Boyd's work claim that this heavy drugging spanned over multiple days is to benefit the woman with pain management, but everyone who has undergone a medical procedure knows you can manage pain without removing consciousness and memory forming capabilities for days on end. Yet case after case, we see each and every woman getting the same high doses of unnecessary sedatives before she is supposed to actively labor and push to deliver the baby inside of her.

One plaintiff suing Curtis Boyd was so heavily drugged during her abortion, she was unaware that the clinic altered her procedure and induced a stillbirth. Her baby was later found listed in the UNM fetal tissue log documenting the body parts incoming from Curtis Boyd's facility. The patient, Nicole Atkins, had no idea she actually delivered an intact baby, she cannot recall if that baby was dead or alive, and she will forever ask herself what Boyd and his staff did after they ensured she was drugged enough not to remember it.

The dark reality is that although abortion advocates like Dr. Kristyn Brandi claim "a live birth after an abortion is an extremely unlikely scenario," it is a far more common scenario than the vast majority of the public realizes. It is a dozens of times a year scenario for Curtis Boyd's facility. With the lack of required reporting and the heavy drugging of the women delivering these born-alive infants, it's no surprise people are not more aware of what's happening in these outpatient induction facilities. But, thankfully, there is more evidence coming out all the time that shows just how badly America needs these protections for infants born alive after abortion.