More than 800 babies were born alive in botched abortions within the past decade in Australia – and potentially left to die.
The disturbing findings by Dr. Joanna Howe, a law professor at the University of Adelaide, have pro-life advocates renewing calls for legislation to protect infants who survive abortions in Australia, Sky News reports.
According to Howe’s research, government statistics about abortion survivors are limited, but data from Queensland and Victoria alone show 724 babies were born alive in botched abortions between 2010 and 2020.
Howe found documentation of 27 more in Western Australia, 54 in South Australia and one each in New South Wales and the Northern Territory. That puts the total at more than 800 in ten years, or about seven babies every month.
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The professor said the number likely is even higher. According to her research, “These numbers are significantly less the overall number of babies born alive following a failed abortion, given that only Queensland and Victoria publicly release fulsome data on babies born alive following a failed abortion. In other jurisdictions, we only have an incomplete and anecdotal picture …”
Federal law does not require abortion workers to provide life-saving medical care for these babies, and Howe said there is evidence that some viable, late-term babies are being abandoned to die.
She pointed to a Northern Territory Coroner’s report about the death of an abortion survivor named Jessica. According to the coroner, Jessica was born alive in a botched abortion and then placed on a metal kidney dish in an empty room until she died.
A nurse who delivered the baby girl told the coroner that Jessica was premature but her vital signs were relatively good. The nurse said Jessica weighed 515 grams (about 1.1 pounds), and she was moving and crying.
The nurse’s testimony suggests the baby girl probably would have survived if she had received basic medical care; but, according to the coroner’s report, the abortion doctor abandoned her to die.
Howe told Sky News that these babies are falling “through the cracks” because the law does not recognize them as human beings. She urged the Australian Parliament to pass the Children Born Alive Protection Bill to provide “birth equality” to newborns no matter what the circumstances of their birth.
In the United States, federal Republican lawmakers have been trying to pass a similar bill for years, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. However, Democrats in Congress repeatedly have blocked it.
In the United States, babies survive abortions every year, but no one knows exactly how many. Only a few states track data on abortion survivors. LifeNews recently examined data from seven states, and, between 2020 and 2022, 34 babies were reported born alive in botched abortions.
Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the personal testimonies of nurses and abortion survivors themselves, also provide evidence that babies survive abortions. According to the CDC, at least 143 babies were born alive after botched abortions between 2003 and 2014 in the U.S., though there likely are many more.
Additional data from Canada and Ireland indicates babies are being born alive in botched abortions and potentially left to die there. In 2018, the Canadian Institute of Health Information recorded 766 late-term, live-birth abortions over a five-year period.
