Why the need to kill a baby before aborting it?

By Tom Quiner

Iowa state senators listen to testimony as they weigh the Heartbeat Bill

I spent at good part of Thursday morning at the Capitol at a hearing on a pro life bill before the legislature, the “Heartbeat Bill.”

Planned Parenthood was out in full force, although there was a solid contingent of respect lifers. The Heartbeat Bill would make it a felony in Iowa to perform an abortion after a heartbeat is detected in a fetus.

The Director of Iowans for Life, Maggie Dewitte, pointed out something shocking. In late second term abortions, Planned Parenthood’s website acknowledged that:

“you may also need a shot through your abdomen to make sure that the fetus’s heart stops before the procedure begins.”

The excerpt from PP’s website is posted on the left, and was originally exposed in an article by The Weekly Standard a few years ago. PP has since removed the latter part of the highlighted passed.

Why would Planned Parenthood feel a need to kill the baby before aborting it? As Ms. Dewitte points out:

“… it assures nearly 100% that there will be no evidence of a live birth when the delivery takes place.”

One of the ugly secrets of later term surgical abortions is that one out of a hundred babies survive. What do you do with a breathing, wounded baby (who minutes earlier was perfectly healthy)?

Kill it.

To be clear, that is what Democrats seem to advocate. Just a few weeks ago, there was a vote at the federal level on H.R. 4712, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in the House of Representatives.

188 Democrats voted against a bill that would require the abortionist to save the life of the “lucky” baby who survives this attempt on its life. Only 2 Democrats voted to save the child’s life.

By contrast, 226 Republicans voted to save the child’s life, with but one dissenting.

Here in Iowa, I heard one human abortion proponent after another insist that denying a healthy mother the right right to abort her healthy baby was an attack on her reproductive health.

Their evidence is unconvincing. By contrast, human abortion is not only an attack on the reproductive health of the baby in the womb, it is an attack on its very life.

That evidence is irrefutable.