Babies Are Being Left To Die In America. President Trump Just Helped More Of Them Live

In 1999, Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, became the epicenter of a scandal that rocked the nation. The hospital, operated jointly by the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was placed under formal investigation by the Illinois Department of Health after nurse Jill Stanek testified before Congress that babies who survived abortions there were left to die unattended in a “utility room.”

As the scandal grew to implicate other hospitals, the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) was passed by voice vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 5, 2002.

BAIPA simply says that “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress [etc.], the words ‘person’, ‘human being’, ‘child’, and ‘individual’, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.” President Trump’s executive order applies this law to two specific acts of Congress.