CLC Blog

Something remarkable is happening in the United States. 

The practice of abortion itself is on trial in the case of the "House of Horrors", late-term abortionist from Philadelphia.  Ostensibly, the case is about the ghoulish activities that took place in the “clinic” of one, Dr. Kermit Gosnell -- activities which read more like the work of a serial killer than a licensed physician. 

However, witness testimony of beheadings and spinal cord-snipping performed by Gosnell to murder 100+ children who were born alive after failed abortions, is revealing the correlation between legal abortion and infanticide. The entire country is being exposed to the fact that infanticide has crept into America’s medical community as a “safety valve” in the event that abortion fails, just like abortion crept into societal thinking as a “back-up” measure in the event that contraception fails.

The Gosnell trial is relevant to recent allegations that acts of infanticide on children who survive abortion may be rampant in Canadian hospitals and private abortion facilities.  In January, Conservative MPs Maurice Vellacott,  Leon Benoit and Wladyslaw Lizon wrote to the RCMP, requesting that it investigate as potential homicides, 491 cases where babies were left to die (or possibly even killed) after surviving an abortion.   

These numbers came from a Stats Canada report that indicates how many children died after surviving an abortion, but it does not detail how they died.

Was it Gosnell-style, with a scissor to the neck? Or suffocation, as we’ve learned some nurses have done in the U.S.? Or did their deaths result by willful neglect, because they were refused admission to a premature infant incubator (i.e. the way wanted newborns are cared for) and instead, left to die on a table, gasping for breath?  

I dwell on the method of death just to make the point that it’s all evil. But whether the scenario in Canadian abortion facilities is less gruesome than what Gosnell is accused of makes no difference. The point is that infanticide after failed abortions appears to be common in Canada.

The urgent request by pro-life Conservative MPs for an investigation was met with a non-response by the RCMP, outrage by the Liberals and NDP, and cowardly indifference from Prime Minister Harper.

What’s the difference between the U.S., where prosecutors are pursuing an abortionist for murdering these live birth survivors, and Canada, where the political class appears willing to accommodate infanticide in the case of botched abortions?

There are many reasons, but one important factor I’ll point to is that American politicians have passed Born Alive Infants Protection legislation. An Act of Congress, signed into law in 2002 by President George W. Bush, explicitly enshrined in law that children who are born alive after an induced abortion must be legally protected. The consequence of this Act is that the instant a child is born alive, the abortionist and nurses involved in the abortion must immediately switch from trying to kill the child, to providing medical treatment to save his/her life.  Otherwise they themselves may face criminal charges.

While this legislation does not criminalize abortion, it does send a powerful message to abortionists, to society and to those who enforce the law, that a right to infanticide cannot be understood to flow from legal abortion.

I think it’s time for Canadian Members of Parliament to pass our own Born Alive Infants Protection Act.  Don’t you?

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