In a recent article in Teen Vogue, the author instructs her audience that there’s no such thing as “post-birth abortion,” arguing that infanticide is illegal in the United States and therefore any statement that it is happening is “categorically false.” A look at the facts, however, pokes holes in this common pro-abortion claim.
The fate of abortion survivors
Infanticide most commonly happens when infants are born alive following botched abortion procedures and are then given no medical care. According to data from the CDC, over the course of 12 years, over 100 infants have survived for at least a short time after a botched abortion. And from 1999-2023, over 220 infants were found to have survived abortion in just eight states.
What isn’t known is how many of these survivors received medical care, and how many were left to die.
There is no federal abortion reporting requirement, and only a handful of states require cases of abortion survivors to be documented — meaning the actual number of infants who survive these horrific procedures is grossly underreported.
Legal loopholes that may allow infanticide
Some states have actively passed legislation that says the abortionist does not have to save an infant who is born alive following a botched abortion — bills passed recently in Maryland, Colorado, and California are worded in such a way that they could allow infanticide through legal loopholes. According to the Family Research Council (FRC), there are 29 states that fail to fully protect abortion survivors. Three states, Minnesota, Illinois, and New York, have repealed laws in place to protect children born alive during abortions from infanticide. Ten other states offer no protections for babies who survive abortions: Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. Meanwhile, California, Washington, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine only offer weak protection for abortion survivors such as ensuring care is provided but not a hospitalization, reporting requirements, and/or no penalties for the non-complying doctors.
Currently, late abortions all the way to birth are permitted in nine states plus D.C., meaning they are most certainly happening in these jurisdictions at an age when a child could survive outside the womb with proper medical intervention.
Minnesota is one of those states; though it has in past years reported abortion survivor statistics, the state passed a law in 2023 that will discontinue the reporting of abortion survivors, and there will be no record of how many survived, or whether they received life-saving care.
The abortion industry admits it allows infanticide
Abortion staffers themselves have gone on record in support of the idea that helpless abortion survivors should be left to die.
Abortionist Laura Mercer told an undercover Live Action investigator that she would not help to resuscitate an infant following a botched abortion procedure. Abortionist Cesare Santangelo told another Live Action investigator the same thing, saying, “We would not help it. We wouldn’t intubate.“ Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow testified in the Florida House against a bill requiring medical care for abortion survivors, arguing that the fate of babies who survive abortions “should be between the patient and the healthcare provider.”
The presence of abortion survivors who are speaking out today serves as a reminder that botched abortions do happen, and sadly, not all of these infants are given the medical care needed to make it.
