Abortion is a story that is often told without discussing who is involved. Pro-abortion feminists talk about “empowerment” or “choice.” Abortion industry lobbyists seek to compel taxpayer funding for a Supreme Court-conferred “right.” The increasingly unpopular healthcare law euphemistically refers to “women’s healthcare services.” Carefully crafted language is routinely used to obscure the reality that a human life hangs in the balance.
Accomplishing this duplicitous feat is appreciably harder at a time of year when so many commemorate history’s most notable birth. Acknowledging the humanity and promise of every child including those yet unborn, Americans United for Life has chosen this special season to release our new Infants’ Protection Project, a collection of expertly crafted model legislation that advances the legal recognition and protection of unborn infants.
A complement to AUL’s hugely successful Women’s Protection Project, the Infants’ Protection Project again showcases AUL’s uniquely effective mother-child strategy and exposes the lie propagated by the abortion industry that a woman’s interests are often at odds with those of her unborn child. It is also a natural extension of AUL’s decades-long leadership in advocating for the protection of unborn children both within and outside the context of abortion.
Writing on the constitutionality of laws limiting abortion, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has acknowledged “that medical procedures must be governed by moral principles having their foundation in the intrinsic value of human life, including life of the unborn.” Model legislation featured in the Infants’ Protection Project furthers this commonsense principle by limiting abortions performed for sex selection or eugenic purposes and abortions performed later in pregnancy when both the risks of inhumane pain to the unborn and the risks to maternal health are particularly acute.
An overarching principle of the project is that both civil and criminal laws should be interpreted expansively to protect life, including the lives of the unborn. Included in this package of model legislation is a special preamble that definitively affirms that state laws should “be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents.” This aspirational policy will both guide the interpretation of existing state laws and will confer even more extensive legal protections on the unborn when the destructive Roe v. Wade decision is overturned.
State and federal law have long recognized the humanity and dignity of unborn infants outside of the context of abortion, and these laws have been uniformly upheld as constitutional. For example, a fetal homicide law recognizes an unborn child as a potential victim of criminal violence.
Decades ago, AUL’s legal experts laid the intellectual groundwork necessary to implement fetal homicide laws nationwide. At the time of the Roe decision in 1973, only three states maintained these protective laws.Today, 38 states have enacted fetal homicide laws, and 30 of these states protect the unborn child beginning at conception. The Infants’ Protection Project continues this formidable legacy by offering model legislation to ensure legal protections for infants who survive attempted abortions and legal recognition of unborn infants killed through a third-party’s criminal or negligent act.
Threats to the humanity and dignity of the unborn continue to grow. Recent revelations that Planned Parenthood may have been generating revenue by harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted infants must be addressed. Similarly, existing state laws that treat stillborn, miscarried, or aborted infants as “medical waste” and do not provide for the legal registration of their deaths must also be remedied.
To that end, the Infants’ Protection Project showcases AUL’s new Unborn Infants Dignity Act. This innovative legislation provides that every mother of a deceased unborn infant will be given the opportunity to ensure that her child is treated with dignity, that all deceased infants will receive respectful treatment including proper burials, that fetal death certificates will be issued in appropriate circumstances, and that the broken bodies of aborted infants will be not trafficked for profit or used in experimentation.
Wise men and women have repeatedly warned that a society will be judged by how it treats the vulnerable and the powerless. As we celebrate a birth two millennia old, Americans must respond to this unyielding truth by actively seeking to protect the unborn, indisputably among the most defenseless in our society. The Infants’ Protection Project provides the necessary tools to ensure that every unborn infant is protected in law and, ultimately, welcomed in life.
Denise M. Burke is vice president of legal affairs for Americans United for Life, and the editor of AUL’s Defending Life, a compendium of life-related model legislation. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
