Senator David Vitter (R-LA)
A University of California professor shocked participants during a Congressional hearing last week with her crass disregard for human life when she advocated for allowing babies born alive after an abortion to be left to die, insisting upon this even while an adult survivor of abortion sat nearby.
LiveActionNews.com is reporting on the testimony of Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D. an abortion advocate from the University of California at San Francisco who attended a March 15 Senate Judiciary Hearing entitled, “Late-Term Abortion: Protecting Babies Born Alive and Capable of Feeling Pain.”
During the hearing, U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-La.) questioned a panel of witnesses on the need for legislation to require health care practitioners to render care to babies who survive attempted abortions.
“Offering the same level of care to children who survive abortions as is offered to women who experience complications in abortions shouldn’t be a political issue—it just makes plain sense, and I am hopeful we can pass commonsense legislation protecting the lives of unborn children.”
Specifically, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivor’s Act (S.2066) would require health professionals present at an abortion to provide urgent medical care to a baby who survives an abortion attempt.
During the hearing, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) addressed the room: “Just to be clear. Nobody disagrees that a child born alive should get all available medical care for survival?”
Diana Greene Foster
“I do disagree,” Foster replied. “I can imagine situations where the doctors and nurses have decided that there’s not a point in medical intervention. And by whisking the baby away [to attempt treatment], you’ve taken away a woman’s chance to hold her child and say goodbye.”
“Okay, so if there is care available towards survival, you think that in some cases that care should be denied?” Vitter asked.
“I think that the law says that all– that the child has to be taken away and receive medical care if there are signs of life – which doesn’t allow for the physician or nurse, or more importantly the wishes of the family, to say that they don’t think that care is going to help in this case and that they want to be able to hold their child,” Foster said.
“And if the care could lead to survival, do you think that should be able to be denied?” Vitter asked again.
“I think that doctors and nurses and women themselves know best whether care would lead to survival,” Foster concluded. “This bill doesn’t allow that judgment to be made.”
Kathi Aultma, a former abortionist and retired gynecologist disagrees with allowing the mother and abortionist to determine what is best for the child. this is because, In the case of a baby surviving an abortion, both the mother and the doctor were intending to kill the child, which means neither the abortionist nor the mother would have the baby’s best interests at heart.
What was even more distressing about Foster’s testimony is that it was made in the presence of Melissa Ohden, an abortion survivor.
Ohden’s mother was eight months pregnant when she underwent a saline infusion abortion. In this procedure, a toxic salt solution is injected into the amniotic fluid which gradually burns through the baby’s skin and into the organs. It usually takes a baby 72 hours to die from this very painful procedure.
Melissa Ohden
When Ohden was born, both mother and doctor thought she was dead but a nurse heard the baby make a faint grunting sound. She checked more closely and realized the baby was still alive. The nurse began immediate care and even though Ohden’s condition was critical, she eventually survived and was adopted by a good family.
One of the most gripping parts of her story is what happened on the night she learned about her origin – that her mother had tried to abort her.
“Everything hurt!” Ohden explained during a recent conference. “Clutching my [step] mother, I sobbed and sobbed that night…”
Sitting in the hearing and listening to the cold-hearted dismissal of lives such as hers must have been equally difficult to hear, but it no doubt strengthened the resolve of this pro-life advocate to fight even harder in the future.
As Live Action’s Cassy Fiano reports, enough babies are born alive after abortion that the industry refers to them as “the dreaded complication”, then simultaneously covers it up and dismisses it as a myth.
“The sad truth is that it not only happens, but when it does, these babies will be cruelly left to die, alone, unloved, without any compassion or even pain medication to make their passing a bit easier,” Fiano says.
Once a baby is born, the issue is no longer about being pro-life or pro-abortion – it’s about human decency.
“It’s sick, barbaric, and should make any person with even a modicum of decency horrified,” Fiano says.
Which it does – to everyone except extreme abortion advocates like Diana Greene Foster and far too many others like her.
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