Protecting born-alive survivors of abortion is not a Republican issue, or a Democrat issue; it is a test of our basic humanity and who we are as a human family. (AP Photo)
By REP. TRENT FRANKS • 10/8/15 12:01 AM
原始網址：http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lets-pass-the-born-alive-abortion-survivors-protection-act/article/2573632
One of the relentless hallmarks of humanity throughout history is our astonishing proclivity as human beings to obscure or rationalize away an incontrovertible truth in our own minds to achieve solidarity and thus, temporary acceptance, within our own, insular peer group.
But it also remains relentlessly true that such temporary popularity is history's pocket change, and that, indeed, it is courage that is history's true currency.
The purpose of this op-ed is to appeal to my colleagues in the Senate (and also to the American people) in the most personal and earnest of terms to find the humanity and courage in their hearts to help pass the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would specifically and directly protect babies born alive in the aftermath of an abortion.
Those who opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act argued that the killing of a born child can be prosecuted under local homicide laws; that this need not be the business of the federal government. But we have now seen that this is not always true.
In the now famous case Floyd v. Anders, which dealt with a child who had survived for 21 days after an abortion, the question was whether that child was protected by the laws on homicide. Judge Clement Haynsworth said that "the mother [in the case] had decided on abortion," and therefore, "the fetus in this case was not a person whose life state law could protect." So a child who survived an abortion for 21 days was not a child protected by state law.
Likewise, the police who came upon abortionist Kermit Gosnell's clinic in Philadelphia and discovered a horrifying scene and several dead babies, many of whom had been born alive, were told by their supervisor that the investigation of abortion was not their business. The sense had taken hold that if we were dealing with an "abortion" in any of its aspects, we were dealing with a "constitutional right" which overrode or trumped local law.
Ashley Baldwin, one of Dr. Gosnell's employees, said she saw babies breathing, and she described one as two feet long who no longer had eyes or a mouth, but, in her words, was making a "screeching" noise ... and it "sounded like a little alien."
And now, in recent days, numerous video recordings of Planned Parenthood have been released that demonstrate that Kermit Gosnell has no monopoly on the abortion industry's unspeakable cruelty to these little babies.
The veil has now been pulled back, and all of us now see behind the walls of the abortion industry and the horrifying plight of its little human victims, who, we must not forget, are also the least of these, our little brothers and sisters. Our response as a people and a nation to the horrors shown in these videos is vital to everything those lying in Arlington National Cemetery died to save.
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 3504, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, on Sept. 18, 2015. This bill requires that babies surviving an abortion be given the same treatment and care that would be given to any child naturally born premature at the same age. The bill also makes it clear there should be criminal penalties at the federal level to prevent monsters like Kermit Gosnell from killing innocent human babies born alive.
The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act protects not unborn children, but rather little children who have been born alive. No one can obscure the humanity and personhood of born alive babies or claim conflict with the now completely separate interests of the mother and the child. Nor can they take refuge within the schizophrenic paradox Roe v. Wade has subjected this country to for more than 40 years.
The abortion industry has labored for all these decades to convince the world that born children and unborn children should be completely separated in our minds; that while born children are persons worthy of protection, unborn children are not persons and are not worthy of protection. But, those who would now oppose this bill to protect born-alive children suddenly have the impossible task of trying to rejoin these born children and unborn children back together again, and then trying to convince us all to condemn them both as collectively inhuman and not worthy of protection after all.
To anyone who has not hardened their heart and soul, an honest consideration of this absurd inconsistency is profoundly enlightening. For this country has faced such paradox and self-imposed blindness before. There was a time that our own parliamentary rules banned any discussion or debate about the effort to end human slavery in America.
But that debate did come, and with it came a time when the humanity of the victims and the inhumanity of what was being done to them became so glaring that it moved an entire generation of people to find the compassion and the courage in their souls to change their position.
And now, to this generation, that moment has come again.
Protecting born-alive survivors of abortion is not a Republican issue, or a Democrat issue; it is a test of our basic humanity and who we are as a human family. Before my colleagues in the Senate vote against this bill, or far worse, vote against the motion to proceed and deprive this bill of an honest debate and a fair vote, I would implore them to ask themselves two questions in the stillness of their hearts:
First, is turning our backs upon the most helpless of all of our born-alive children who the United States of America has truly become as a nation?
Second, is voting against, or filibustering against, a bill to protect born-alive human babies from agonizing dismemberment and death who I have become, and would like to be remembered for, as United States senator?
Trent Franks is the U.S. representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
