{"id":209401,"date":"2019-08-26T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T03:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=209401"},"modified":"2024-09-20T12:29:57","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T17:29:57","slug":"politifact-abortion-survivors-protected-false-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/politifact-abortion-survivors-protected-false-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Politifact claims abortion survivors are adequately protected. The facts tell a different story."},"content":{"rendered":"
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North Carolina lawmakers tried to put protections in place for abortion survivors earlier this year, with Senate Bill 359, the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” passing both the House and Senate. Unfortunately, Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill<\/a> in April. Politifact weighed in, claiming that State Senator Joyce Krawiec’s statements on the need for the bill were “false.” But was Politifact actually accurate in its fact-checking?<\/p>\n

Krawiec, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said<\/a>, “No, we do not have laws in place protecting babies who are born alive as the result of an abortion.” Politifact’s supposed fact-check of Krawiec’s comments cited numerous experts, who claimed that such a bill is not necessary.\u00a0Neil Siegel, a professor at Duke Law School, told Politifact, “If you have a baby born alive, it doesn\u2019t matter if it was born from a failed abortion or otherwise … it\u2019s entitled to full constitutional protections.” Politifact also cited the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” as a reason why no further law is needed — a frequent pro-abortion rebuttal. Yet — as Politifact admits — that law includes no penalties whatsoever<\/em>, making it “toothless and purely symbolic,” according to Dwight Duncan, a University of Massachusetts law professor quoted by Politifact.<\/p>\n

Politifact also included a statement from Bill D\u2019Elia, a spokesman for North Carolina Senator Phil Berger. “Under current state law, an intentional killing of a baby is covered by our murder statutes and a killing of an unborn baby is covered by the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, but there is no current statute that covers deliberately withholding care to a child born alive during an abortion<\/em>,” D\u2019Elia said to Politifact (emphasis added). “In theory, a medical professional could be charged with manslaughter for withholding care but it is not explicit in current state law<\/em>.” The new law, D’Elia said, would have made it “clear.”<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0PolitiFact\u2019s abortion \u201cfact-checking\u201d is really political hackery<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s interesting that Politifact chose to rate this claim as “false,” despite showing numerous examples of why Krawiec’s statement on the clear need for the law had merit. To this day, babies are still born alive after failed abortions<\/a>, and there are\u00a0virtually no protections for them<\/a> under federal law. While existing laws claim to protect abortion survivors, they are — as pointed out by Duncan — only symbolic, giving lip service to the idea of protecting abortion survivors, while taking no action whatsoever. And these protections are sorely needed.<\/p>\n