Southern Baptists affirm that every human is created in the image of God. As stated in a 2022 resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Bible “reveals that all human life is created in the image of God, and therefore sacred to our Creator.” Further, the Convention’s Baptist Faith & Message affirms that “children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” and calls us to “speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.”
Current federal law lacks sufficient legal protection and medical provision for children who survive failed abortions. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act extends sufficient legal protection and medical provision to children who survive failed abortions. The bill would amend the federal criminal code to require any health care practitioner who is present when a child is born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion to, first, exercise the same degree of care as reasonably provided to any other child born alive at the same gestational age, and second, ensure that such a child is immediately admitted to a hospital.
Infanticide is a grotesque injustice. When a child is born alive, whether in a hospital, at home, or in an abortion clinic, any action taken to end that child’s life is and always ought to be considered murder. Babies born alive following an attempted abortion procedure are living human beings who should have the same access to every measure of medical care available to premature born babies through postnatal care units.
The ERLC is committed to defending the vulnerable at every stage of life. Withholding medical care from an infant who was born alive denies the human dignity affirmed to them by God. Such a callous dereliction of responsibility by both the legal system and medical profession also denies that child’s basic human right of life as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
ERLC urges Congress to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Children have intrinsic value not defined by their power nor the whim of doctors, but by the image of God each one of them bears.
