Born Alive Act highlights significant division in our culture

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TO THE EDITOR:

President Joe Biden has used the term “inflection point” — which he appropriated from Barack Obama — to signify big changes occurring or possible, which he sees as why the country needs him and his policies. But I get it; he means something big. A single event can signify enormous importance about the present moment. An inflection moment occurred in the House of Representatives when 210 men and women of the Democratic party voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The Act they voted on is straightforward. In the case of an abortion or attempted abortion “that results in a child born alive,” a health care practitioner must act to preserve the life and health of the child. One is faced with a child. A child that is born. A person that is alive. What then: take the baby by the ankles and smash its head against the wall? Suffocate it? Let the child starve? Stick it with a needle of poison? The position on the vote of these 210 was to let someone cause the living child to die, not to enable it to live. The Act provides that if “an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws.” Some object to the criminal provisions attached to the Act. So, it’s not criminal to kill a person? There are those who agree with the position of the Democratic representatives. There are those who are shocked that anyone could vote against protection of a human life. This event lays open the thoughts of many, and is indeed pivotal. It shows as under a harsh light a gap and a division in our culture that has not existed since the development of the revulsion against the inhumanity of slavery. The difference is stark. Which way are we eventually going to go?

Gregory Butler, Lincoln