Babies Born Alive After Botched Abortions are being Murdered or Left to Die Globally

Two years ago I told you about the grizzly practice of babies being born alive after botched abortions and then grotesquely murdered.

They are physically strangled, mutilated, or left to die on the abortionist’s table.

It’s unthinkable, but it happens.  The worst part is these babies survive the brutal act of abortion (attempted killing) only to be savagely killed or left to die thereafter.

In the U.S. alone at least 362 babies born alive as the result of botched abortions have thereafter died in the last decade.

In fact, the phenomenon is recurrent enough that the World Health Organization has assigned an ICD-10 code for mortality – cause of death – covering it.  One scholarly medical journal shockingly reported that as many as one out of every thirty attempted late-term abortions could result in a live birth (more on that below).

Disturbingly, this travesty is not limited to the U.S. but is a worldwide problem.

Our international affiliate, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), has just filed a petition with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to expose this heinous human rights violation.

Representing nearly 200,000 individuals around the world and numerous organizations, the petition states:

This petition denounces the torture and infanticide inflicted on some children born alive following an attempted late term abortion. Every year, numerous babies survive an abortion. In these cases, they are left to die or even killed.

This petition denounces these serious and repeated violations of human rights, practiced in various member States of the Council of Europe, and which constitute a structural problem. . . .

When a child is born very prematurely, everything is put in place to save them. If survival is not possible, the baby still receives care and is supported until their death. This conforms with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child according to which: “States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”

The petition goes on to highlight how medical advances allow for children as young as 21 weeks gestation to survive and thrive outside the womb.  It further demonstrates the appalling statistics from around the world of babies being killed or left to die after surviving an abortion.

As the petition notes:

Being born alive after an abortion is not exceptional. This possibility is enlisted on the International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organisation; Chapter XVΙ entitled ‘Certain conditions originating in the prenatal period’; section P96-4, ‘Termination of pregnancy affecting foetus and newborn’.

It goes on to detail the widespread practice of this total degradation of the human rights of children all over the world:

This problem occurs in all countries allowing late term abortion on demand or for medical reasons.

Thus, for example, 622 children were born alive in Canada after termination of pregnancies between 2000 and 2011, and 362 between 2001 and 2010 in the United States where a law was adopted in 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, to protect these children. In Norway, from 2001 to 2009, five babies had been aborted after the 22 week limit; between 2010 and 2011, 12 such late term abortions were carried out. The hearts of some of the aborted children continued to beat for almost 45 to 90 minutes. Following this, Norway prohibited all abortions after 22 weeks in January 2014. In 2010 in Italy, a baby, who was aborted at 22 weeks because of a cleft palate, was discovered alive 20 hours after birth and continued to survive for one more day. A similar case had already happened in 2007. In the Netherlands the situation is even worse: after 24 weeks, in cases of serious malformation, not only is abortion possible but so is infanticide. The majority of these countries do not give any information on these events. It is very difficult to obtain precise data because these States rarely acknowledge this situation let alone provide information.

In France, children born before 22 weeks or during a medical termination of pregnancy, have no birth certificate but only a record of a lifeless child, even if they were born alive. “The record drawn up shall be without prejudice to knowing whether the child has lived or not” according to Article 79-1 of the Civil Code. No information is given on the number of children born alive, how long they survive such procedures nor what is to be done with them. Even parents do not know: sometimes they are given the child, who dies in their arms, but often the child is brought to another room. The parents, therefore, only see (if they wish) the child later, without having been able to be there with their child during those few moments, not knowing how the baby died.

In the United Kingdom: In 2005, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology published the conclusions of Dr. Shantala Vadeyar, researcher at the St. Mary Hospital (Manchester), who states that children aged 18 weeks have survived, for a certain time, outside the uterus after an abortion. Dr. Vadeyar revealed that in the North West between 1996 and 2001, at least 31 children survived attempted abortions. In 2007, a study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology concluded that around one abortion out of 30 beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy results in the birth a living child. At 23 weeks, the level of children born reached 9.7%. According to a Swedish mid-wife, the figure could even reach 25%. In the CEMACH 2007 “Perinatal Mortality”, releasing data from hospitals in England and Wales in 2005, it was revealed that:

“Sixty-six of the 2235 neonatal deaths notified in England and Wales followed legal termination (predominantly on account of congenital anomalies) of the pregnancy i.e. born showing signs of life and dying during the neonatal period. Sixteen were born at 22 weeks’ gestation or later and death occurred between 1 and 270 minutes after birth (median: 66 minutes). The remaining 50 foetuses were born before 22 weeks’ gestation and death occurred between 0 and 615 minutes after birth (median: 55 minutes)”. In other words, one of these new-borns breathed without assistance for more than ten hours.

The director of the CEMACH Richard Congdon stated that the lethal injection had not been given in the 16 cases when the abortion took place after 22 weeks of pregnancy because death was “inevitable”. Therefore, they were left to die.

Yet the response all across Europe has not been to correct this atrocity, but to cover it up.  The ECLJ petition notes that many reporting agencies have simply, and intentionally, neglected to record any recent instances of babies being murdered and left to die after first surviving botched abortions.

The problem isn’t going away; it just simply isn’t being reported any longer, swept under the abominable rug.

The ECLJ petition concludes, based on available data that

these children are frequently abandoned without care, put aside in an empty room or closet, where they struggle to breathe, sometimes injured by the abortion, before dying alone. In certain countries or hospitals, the parents may retrieve the body or a cemetery can be provided. In other cases, they are incinerated with organic hospital waste, and even sometimes burnt as fuel used for heating hospitals. According to witness testimonies, some may be asphyxiated or thrown away with waste despite signs of life. In other words, these newborns are killed or left to die, even though in another room, doctors try to save premature babies of the same gestational age. These situations are significantly traumatising for medical personnel.

Numerous international human rights treaties and conventions, in word, protect these children, but in deed, they are slaughtered.

Our affiliate’s petition demands action from the Council of Europe to enforce these treaties and international legal obligations on its member nations: “The Council of Europe cannot renounce the guarantee of fundamental rights to all human beings. A premature baby, even born during an attempted late term abortion, is a human being.”

These lives must be protected.  They deserve life (if for no other reason then they have exerted their will to live and defied the murderous effects of abortion).  These children chose life.  Yet they are slaughtered.

At the ACLJ and our international affiliates, we will continue fighting for these innocent children.  We will fight to expose the Gosnell’s of the world who make a living harming women and barbarically killing children.  We will fight through the legal systems to ensure that every life – every precious God given life – is protected and that no child is left to suffocate on the abortion clinic table.

This article is crossposted on Red State.