Kenneth L. Connor is president of Family Research Council, a Washington public policy organization. |
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Although little heralded in the mainstream press, the Born Alive Act marks a watershed in the effort to roll back the abortion-on-demand regime created by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The law makes it clear that a woman's right to an abortion does not guarantee the right to a dead baby. A child who survives an abortion and manages to be born will be protected -- even if his or her birth was not intended or desired
The same logic that led to the passage of the Born Alive Act now should be extended to the effort to ban partial-birth abortion. A bill banning this odious procedure passed the House by a 123 vote majority and awaits action in the Senate.
Despite the ongoing debate about the personhood of the unborn child, all but the most zealous of abortion proponents recognize that the infant who survives an abortion is clearly a child with inherent dignity and a right to life. The only difference between the Born Alive Act and the effort to ban partial birth abortion is a matter of inches. If a baby deserves the full protection of the law at the instant of her birth, how can we deny those same protections at the very moment she emerges into the world? Surely "location" ought not to be dispositive of the issue of personhood. Objectively, it's the same baby. Only the baby's location has changed.
President Bush has urged the Senate to pass the partial-birth abortion bill. His signing today of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act underscores the need to draw clear distinctions between abortion and infanticide. Just as the Procrustean logic of Roe has brutalized and desensitized our society and produced such horrors as partial-birth abortion, so now should the logic of the Born Alive Act lead the Senate to act on the effort to proscribe a medically unnecessary procedure that has no therapeutic benefit for women.
As long as the value of one life is contingent upon the desires of another, no life is completely protected in law. A mother's right to privacy (the legal pretext for Roe) loses supremacy when it threatens the life of her child. The child who survives an abortion, now protected by the law, shows us that the mother's decision concerns more than just the mother and her doctor. It concerns at least three persons: mother, child, doctor, and hopefully the father, too. In passing the Born-Alive Act, the Senate made clear that it understood these vital human relationships.
Professor Hadley Arkes of Princeton University, chief architect of the Born Alive Act, regards it as landmark law limiting the so-called "right" to abortion. With the president's signature today, no one will be able to deny the humanity of the abortion survivor. Nor can any deny the humanity of the baby who is almost born save for the few inches of her head that remain inside her mother. Despite the intention of the mother and all of her rights, another person clearly exists. As Arkes explains, "The child marked for an abortion is recognized now as an entity that comes within the protection of the law."
The Senate has acknowledged the humanity of the child after an abortion has failed. The next step is to recognize the humanity of the fetus that has attained viability and is partially delivered before she is killed.
Abortion advocates worry that any limitations on abortion will ultimately erode abortion rights. They're right. They oppose any legal recognition of the personhood of the unborn at any stage of development through viability and at the very instant of birth. With today's presidential action, that position will be much harder to defend.
President Bush recognizes that every child ought to be protected in law from the moment of conception. With his public signing of this bill today, he once again broadens the scope of basic human rights in America.