Pro-Life Bill Would Legally Classify Baby Outside of Womb as a Person To Be Protected

By Rusty Pugh
AFR News
August 3, 2000

(AgapePress) - Most pro-life advocates agree that human life begins at the moment of conception. However, there are pro-abortion forces who would deny a child’s right to life even after birth.  An important new pro-life bill--the Born Alive Infants Protection Act--would establish a federal law recognizing that an infant is legally alive once he or she is completely outside the mother’s womb.

Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee says the Born Alive Infants Protection Act would clarify what most people already take for granted--that an infant is a living, breathing human being.

"[The Act] would establish [for the purposes of federal law] that once a baby is all the way outside the mother and shows any signs of life, such as a heartbeat or breathing or movements," Johnson says,  "that child is fully protected by the law."

Johnson admits such protection may seem obvious, but he says "the legal rights and the personhood...of some newborn babies has [sic] been called into question in recent years by some advocates of abortion.  The federal government does not have such a rule in the federal law."

The National Abortion Rights Action League harshly criticized the bill, calling it a "renewed assault on Roe vs. Wade."

"We think it is very significant that when the hearing was held on this bill before a congressional subcommittee last week," Johnson says, "[NARAL] filed a statement strongly objecting to the bill.  They said that this bill violates Roe vs. Wade."

"So according to NARAL," he says, "apparently you can be a baby who is all the way outside the mother and living and breathing and still not be a person."

Johnson says the bill would simply codify, for federal purposes, the traditional legal rule regarding an infant outside the mother’s womb.

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