HHS Enforces 2002 Law for Hospitals to Offer Rights to Fetuses that Survive Abortions

The administration's directive said such efforts were required by a 2002 law known as the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the federal government would "aggressively enforce" the law.
Under the law, the administration said, a fetus that survives an abortion procedure is no longer a fetus, but a person entitled to emergency medical care and protection against child abuse and neglect.
...By its terms, the law protects "every infant member of the species Homo sapiens" who "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles" after expulsion or extraction from the womb as a result of normal childbirth, a Caesarean section or an induced abortion.
...The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists had no immediate comment on the new directives. Defenders of abortion rights, including Naral Pro-Choice America and the Center for Reproductive Rights, said they had no comment.