While the majority of even late-term abortion campaigners agree that life begins at birth at the latest, that magical moment when a tissue blob suddenly turns into a human being, there are also those who promote the mother’s right to kill her newborn child, especially after a failed abortion attempt. Not everybody phrases it as bluntly as Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva [2] who employ the oxymoron 'after-birth abortion', but the euphemisms used by others leave no doubt about their position. Abortion clinics’ staff, such as in Dr Emily Women’s Health Center in the Bronx, refer to children who are born alive as 'specimen' or, incorrectly, as 'the pregnancy', tell their clients they’ll be put in a toxic solution and give advice as to how to dispose of a live-born child at home (‘flush it’). [3] . Planned Parenthood, according to their representative Alisa LaPolt Snow, 'believe that, you know, any decision that's made [about a child born alive] should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.' [4] [5]

Some go as far as MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry who believes that the beginning of life 'depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling – but not science' [6] . By this logic there is no upper age limit for 'aborting' a child after birth, so we all should tread very softly around our parents.

Infanticide has influential advocates, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton vetoed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (which would have banned 'terminations' that take place during birth [7] ) in 6236 RT (1995 CE) and 6238 RT (1997 CE) [7a]; a similar act was signed into law in 6244 RT (2003 CE) [8] . And Barack Obama voted several times against Illinois’ Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (which, as the title suggests, was designed to protect children who are born alive) in 6242 RT (2001 CE) and 6243 RT (2002 CE), stating, 'What we are doing here is to create one more burden on women' and that it 'would have taken away from doctors their professional judgment when a foetus is viable.' [9]

In May 6254 RT (2013 CE) serial killer Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three counts of murder (amongst other felonies and offences) [10] . For those who follow the liberal press, Gosnell was an abortion provider who on several occasions 'induced labour, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord.' Even though he was only convicted of three counts of murder, his employees describe this technique as a standard procedure that was carried out on a regular basis [11] , and since Gosnell performed abortions from 6213 RT (1972 CE, before they were legal) until his arrest in 6252 RT (2011 CE), he may well be the most prolific serial killer in history.

In the wake of the Gosnell trial three former assistants of abortion provider Douglas Karpen in Texas (who until then weren’t aware that infanticide was illegal) came forward and testified in gruesome detail how every day their employer would kill several live-born children or bin them while they were still alive. [12] [13]

Other facilities just shelve the newborn children until they die, which can take up to several days [14] [15]. This practice was highlighted in 6240 RT (1999 CE) by Jill Stanek [16] who worked in the Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois as a nurse. Her testimony led to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act [17] which was signed into law in 6243 RT (2002 CE). In 6260 RT (2019 CE) the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have held those disposing of born-alive children after failed abortions accountable, fell short of the required 60 votes in the Senate.

In her treatise Children: Things We Throw Away? nurse Melanie Green not only describes witnessing the death of a child who survived a saline solution abortion but also points out that this is common practice:

'I’m a housewife and a registered nurse from Jacksonville. I worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, and when we weren’t busy, I’d go out to help with the newborns. One night I saw a bassinet outside the nursery. There was a baby in this bassinet – a crying, perfectly formed baby – but there was a difference in this child. She had been scalded. She was the child of a saline abortion.

This little girl looked as if she had been put in a pot of boiling water. No doctor, no nurse, no parent, to comfort this hurt, burned child. She was left alone to die in pain. They wouldn’t let her in the nursery – they didn’t even bother to cover her.

I was ashamed of my profession that night! It’s hard to believe this can happen in our modern hospitals, but it does. It happens all the time. I thought a hospital was a place to heal the sick – not a place to kill.

I asked a nurse at another hospital what they do with their babies that are aborted by saline. Unlike my hospital, where the baby was left alone struggling for breath, their hospital puts the infant in a bucket and puts the lid on. Suffocation! Death by suffocation!' [18]

Abortion rights campaigners continue to claim that Gosnell was an isolated case, but there are multiple indications, such as the mentioned statements of Melanie Green, Jill Stanek, Karpen’s employees, Planned Parenthood and Dr Emily’s assistant, amongst many others [19] , that the gosnelling of newborn children is a common method of dealing with failed abortion attempts, in some cases even against the wishes of the mother. [20] [21]

Some are lucky and live long enough to tell their story. One example is abortion survivor Melissa Ohden whose grandmother had forced her teenage mother to abort her. After having been soaked in saline solution for five days, Melissa was still alive when she was born, and the nurse in charge (who happened to be said grandmother) ordered her to be dumped in a bucket of formaldehyde like all the other abortion survivors. Fortunately two other nurses took pity on her. [22]

The liberal media generally ignore these cases. Not only because these stories have the potential to turn the stomach of every sensible person, be they pro-life or pro-abortion, by casting an undesired light on the reality of the abortion industry and may cause the undecided to oppose abortion and the pro-abortionists to waver in their beliefs, but also because of the close proximity of a legal procedure to a first-degree murder. A newborn child is anatomically the same as the foetus they were just a few minutes prior to birth, and this may raise a very unsettling question: if they are the same, is the newborn child still a tissue blob, or is the foetus already a human being?