Attorney General Holder has no knowledge of enforcing Born-Alive Infants Protection Act

For several weeks now, Live Action has been publishing a series of articles revealing the secret horror taking place inside abortion clinics – the deliberate murder of infants born alive following a failed abortion. (LifeSiteNews has reprinted and cataloged this series here.) Gruesome testimonies of nurses forced to ignore infants gasping for breath, or covered in horrific wounds. Undeniable reports of doctors strangling, drowning, and suffocating infants who just “won’t die.” Photos of tiny, still children, with skin the undeniable pink of a human being who had shortly before had a heartbeat.

Most of these stories occurred prior to the passage of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), passed in 2002, specifically to protect the most vulnerable of society (at least upon their birth). The act requires that any newborn showing specified signs of life, including voluntary movement, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or a heartbeat, be given immediate and life-saving medical care, even if the infant was born following a failed abortion.

As Live Action’s recent investigative campaign Inhuman reveals, however, abortionists are clearly willing to ignore or circumvent the law to ensure a dead baby. This should come as no surprise, since some cases of deliberate infanticide have been recorded since the 2002 passage of the act, including a baby girl thrown into a plastic bag to suffocate and then hidden on the roof, and the heart-wrenching story of “Baby Rowen,” who died as his mother screamed for someone to help the tiny child. Then there was the discovery of Kermit Gosnell and his House of Horrors, wherein was found the routine practice of delivering living infants and severing their spinal cords. Then the revelation of “Another Gosnell,” a Texas abortionist who former staffers say often delivered living babies, then slashed their throats or literally twisted their heads off their necks.

Given the wide range of evidence in these cases, including photos of murdered newborns with pink, intact skin (indicating live birth and no decomposition) and the affidavits of multiple nurses who participated in and witnessed these procedures, this would normally be considered every prosecutor’s dream – an open-and-shut case whereby a gruesome murderer is served with justice. Yet when Attorney General Eric Holder was asked yesterday by a congressional committee whether BAIPA has been enforced, even once, Holder had no idea whether the AG’s office, the agency in charge of enforcing the law, had ever taken steps to charge anyone with violating the federal statute.

No knowledge of any cases ever filed, despite the clear evidence of continuing infanticide. Despite the fact that, according to the congressman asking the question, there have been approximately 18,000 opportunities since enactment of the law to enforce these protections. Despite the fact that a Planned Parenthood counselor was caught on video admitting to routine infanticide seven years after BAIPA was passed. Despite the fact that a strong case can be made, using CDC death statistics and the Guttmacher Institute’s own reports of abortions, that at least 1 in 45 abortions of infants 2o weeks or later results in a live birth. Despite overwhelming evidence that federal statutes were routinely being violated, America’s attorney general does not know if any action was ever taken, even once, to prosecute clear cases of murder.

Perhaps this should be no surprise. Obama himself voted multiple times against state legislation designed to protect newborns, then lied about his reasoning, claiming that the law did not contain protections for true abortions, even when it clearly did. Planned Parenthood, by far the nation’s largest abortion provider, also recently testified in a Florida legislative hearing in opposition to a state Born Alive Act, stating that whatever decision is made regarding a born-alive infant should be “left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

Given the propensity to ignore, cover up, or outright support the clear murder of newborn children, it may not be all that amazing that the man in charge of enforcing the federal statute simply “doesn’t know” if any such efforts were ever made.