The pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recently issued a strongly worded statement in opposition to an initiative by Texas Republicans to pass HB 16, which would strengthen protections for abortion survivors. The proposed law, which would formally create a physician-patient relationship between abortionists and babies who survive abortion, establishes severe civil penalties for abortionists who fail to provide the same standard of care to survivors of abortion as any other infant born at that gestational age. The law would also enable anonymous reporting of non-compliance to the Texas state attorney general.

In opposing what should be, by any reasonable measure, a non-controversial anti-infanticide law, ACOG uses arguments that are deceptive, unfounded, and even self-contradictory. Here are some of the more flagrant examples.

ACOG Claim #1: “The bill relies on non-scientific information.”

Specifically, ACOG asserts that “the idea that physicians deliver, and then kill or neglect treating, a viable fetus is unfounded and dangerous misinformation.” Overwhelming evidence shows this statement to be simply false. One must look no further than America’s most infamous case, that of notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell. As the Grand Jury in Gosnell’s case so aptly put it, “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.”

And Gosnell is not an outlier, contrary to what abortion activists claim. Live Action has uncovered many disturbing instances in which abortionists and their staff have clearly indicated that babies born alive after abortion attempts would be killed or left to die. The Family Planning Associates Medical Group in Phoenix, Arizona; Cesare Santangelo’s late-term Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C.; Emily’s Women’s Center in the Bronx; abortionists that former StemExpress technician-turned-whistleblower Holly O’Donnell worked with — these are just a sampling of abortionists around the country whom Live Action found to quietly advocate either killing or leaving abortion survivors to die. ACOG’s assertion that there is “no evidence of a pattern of infants being ‘born alive’ after an abortion, much less of doctors neglecting treatment in those circumstances” is at best ignorant and, at worst, dangerously misleading.

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READ: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists isn’t neutral. It’s pro-abortion.

ACOG Claim #2: Existing federal and state protections for abortion survivors are sufficient.

ACOG’s criticism here falls in line with the the baseless criticism of Senator Sasse’s recent Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which Democrats blocked in the United States Senate largely on the false claim that it duplicates the 2002 Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The truth is that HB 16, like Senator Sasse’s bill, would specifically require survivors of abortion to receive the same level of care as any infant born at the same gestational age — which explicitly goes beyond current law. In addition, HB 16 seeks to create new mechanisms to beef up enforcement.

ACOG tellingly contradicts itself on this point: in one breath ACOG claims that HB 16 is identical to current law, but then it warns in the next sentence that HB 16’s creation of an anonymous tip line, which would enable citizens to report violations to the state attorney general, would discourage physicians from offering abortion. But they can’t have it both ways.

It is evident that ACOG recognizes that HB 16 would create enforcement mechanisms that might actually work, and it seems to be using current law as a smokescreen to prevent the tougher enforcement that HB 16 would bring.

ACOG Claim #3: “This bill negatively impacts the patient/physician relationship.”

ACOG says that physicians would be afraid to commit abortions because of the new law. But ACOG is again trying to have it both ways. The problem is that ACOG already asserted that all abortionists already care for abortion survivors, and all contrary claims are “unfounded and dangerous misinformation.” So if abortionists are not killing or letting abortion survivors die, as argued, then why would a law against infanticide have any bearing on a physician’s willingness to commit an abortion? It just doesn’t add up.

When one examines ACOG’s reasoning for opposing legislation that would strengthen protections for abortion survivors, a disturbing question lingers: Are ACOG’s protests really just an attempt to protect what is, in reality, a disturbing but hidden part of the abortion “business model”? Otherwise, what could be wrong with strengthening laws against such a heinous practice as killing or letting abortion survivors die? After all, if even one doctor commits these atrocities, wouldn’t we want to make every effort to ensure we stop him? The reality may be that the only thing “dangerous” about laws like Texas’ HB 16 is that it threatens to expose the horror of abortion for what it truly is.

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