Mark Souder: “as a cosponsor of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, I strongly support its passage. This bill would firmly…”

“as a cosponsor of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, I strongly support its passage. This bill would firmly establish that, for purposes of federal law, an infant who is born alive is, indeed, a person and is entitled to the protections of the law. This concept has been a standing legal principle, spelled out in many state statutes and recognized by some federal courts in interpreting federal criminal laws. However, recent changes in the legal and cultural landscape appear to have brought this well-settled principle into question and have made it necessary for the Congress to ensure that this principle becomes law. A significant change in how the law defines a person occurred with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortion. Partial-birth abortion is a procedure in which a doctor delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside of the mother, punctures the back of the child's skull with scissors and sucks the child's brains out before completing the delivery. The Court's decision found that the location of an infant at the time of death--delivered partly outside the body of the mother--is of no legal significance. The Court's decision implies that a partially born infant's entitlement to the protections of the law is dependent upon whether or not the partially born child's mother wants him or her.”