As the GOP-led House of Representatives began its legislative sessions this week, one of its first acts was to protect babies born alive after a failed abortion attempt. The “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” passed the house with a vote of 220-210 but not one of the three New Mexico House representatives voted to save a child born alive, otherwise known as infanticide.
The act deals with the nightmare scenario of a woman who has decided in the late stages of her baby’s growth in the womb that she no longer wants the child and must end his or her life at an abortion clinic. During the course of the attempted murder, the child somehow evades the doctor’s clutches and is born alive.
The gravely injured baby might still be saved if taken to an actual doctor that is interested in performing the life-saving treatment, but instead, the child is left to struggle and flounder until he or she succumbs to the wounds inflicted on them in the womb.
The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would require someone to show compassion for the brutalized baby and take action to save their life by getting the needed help at a medical facility. But 210 US representatives lacked the humanity to vote in favor of such a bill.
Representatives Melanie Stansbury (D-NM-01), Gabe Vasquez (D-NM-02), and Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM-03) have all voiced their dedication to killing children from the moment of conception to an undefined point after birth. All three have called such compassionate legislation “extreme,” “far-right,” and infringing on so-called women’s health care.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez made the most incoherent argument when she posted a video to Twitter stating, “They would wrench that baby from their parents and force them to take ‘em to a hospital and spend their last minutes, their last hours hooked up to a machine rather than in the arms of the mother who loved that child.”
The “mother who loved that child” would not have attempted to kill her child.
Keep in mind that this is what New Mexico has chosen. In last November’s election, New Mexico chose to elect or re-elect all of the anti-life politicians they could find, and now we are reaping the harvest.
Many will say that they did not choose the culture of death for our state, and they are attempting to restrict abortion at a local level. This is a small start but not likely to stand up to state law changes and state court decisions.
We must work harder to make the case that life begins at conception and that a woman’s right to choose happens before that point. When we don’t stand up to the culture of death, we devalue life.
