Outrageous! When Did We Embrace Infanticide?

The moment an illegal alien crosses the border, stepping foot upon American soil, we have a host of politicians and advocacy groups who are eager to provide support, such as medical care, food, transportation, and legal counsel.^[1] If they simply persevere across that border line, they know they will be cared for and protected from even their most ardent opponents. However, there is another border line where such provisions are strikingly absent. Newborn babies who persevere through an attempted abortion do not know whether they will be cared for and protected once they cross the line into our world. Instead, as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam informed us, states such as Virginia are proposing that the mother may determine whether to resuscitate the child, and then the baby may be set aside and kept comfortable while the mother and doctor consult with one another regarding whether to deprive the child of necessary medical care with the intent of seeing the baby die.^[2][3]

According to an Americans United for Life report, 19 states do not require protection for babies born alive after a failed abortion,^[4] and last month, New York repealed its state law protecting newborns who are born alive during failed abortions.^[5][6] How is this any different from the Ancient Greeks who used to abandon their unwanted babies to perish from nature’s elements, starvation, or wild animals? In the past, this was called infanticide, but today we call it care for a mother’s health.^[7] Today, depriving newborn babies of life-saving care is deemed an acceptable extension of a woman’s right to abort her baby.^[8]

To counter this, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) introduced a bill titled the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act”^[9] which would require that health care providers offer any baby who is born after a failed abortion the same level of medical care they would give to any other baby at the same gestational age.^[10] According to Sasse, “This isn’t about restricting access to abortion. We’re talking about making sure that newborn babies are treated with dignity and receive care whether they’re born in the maternity wing or an abortion clinic. This is the bare minimum in humane treatment.”^[11]

Incredible as it is that such a bill is deemed necessary, it is perhaps more incredible that on Monday this bill failed to pass the US. Senate with the required 60 votes, garnering only 53 votes. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) went so far as to claim that the bill “forces physicians to provide inappropriate medical treatment.”^[12] Gone are the days when the Hippocratic Oath’s pledge to do no harm was a universally accepted standard for medical treatment. Instead, we have senators who are openly advocating that doctors should be permitted to deprive their patients (the newborn baby) of life-saving care. Amazingly, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) saw no contradiction in her Tweet, “Conservative politicians should not be telling doctors how they should care for their patients.”^[13] According to this bill, the living, breathing, newborn baby would be the patient in question, not the mother.

How can we sit idly by as our government leaders make such statements in defense of infanticide? In a sermon titled “A Knock at Midnight,” Martin Luther King Jr. once exhorted God’s people, saying, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”^[14]

The church—God’s people—should serve as the conscience of the nation. If we don’t speak up, then who will? It is appalling how God’s people have managed to largely ignore the recent debate over late-term abortion and even post-birth abortion. If we remain silent on this matter, then we are culpable for the innocent blood that is about to be shed.

Every church should be up in arms this Sunday over Monday’s vote. The internet should be afire with blogs, videos, Instagram photos, and Tweets expressing outrage. There should be protestors in the streets. Our congressmen should be inundated with phone calls and e-mails expressing outrage. Pro-life advocates should be demanding our attention. And every one of us should be intentionally raising awareness by informing our family, friends, co-workers, and communities about the Senate’s refusal to protect the life of a baby after it has been born.

What will you do to raise awareness? How will you express your outrage? We should all desire to speak loud enough to ensure that God hears our opposition to this atrocity lest we be held culpable for the shedding of our nation’s most innocent blood.