A pro-choice student at Boston College is in the news this week for repeatedly claiming that a baby born after a failed abortion is “not a baby.”
The student made the claim during an exchange with Kristan Hawkins, a pro-life advocate and president of Students for Life of America, during a sold-out stop on Hawkins’ “Lies Feminists Tell” university tour. Hawkins later wrote about the uncomfortable exchange on Twitter.
"There is an abortion crisis of one million killings a year, and it all starts with dehumanizing the unborn," Hawkins tweeted, referring to the heated encounter that occurred between her and the student during the Q and A portion of the event.
The pro-life speaker had been invited to the university by the Boston College Pro-Life Club. During the exchange with the pro-choice student, Hawkins compared the humanity of a child at the U.S.-Mexico border to the humanity of a preborn baby within the walls of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.
“Do you think that children that are apprehended at the border that are in U.S. government care…do you think babies who are going to die should be resuscitated and given care?” Hawkins asked, in reference to children at the border.
"Yes," the student replied.
“Okay. Do you believe that a baby who is born alive during an abortion at Planned Parenthood should get care?” Hawkins followed up.
The student replied, "No."
That’s when Hawkins paused and asked: "What's the difference?"
When Hawkins asked again why the child who survives a botched abortion is not a child, the student doubled down.
“Because they’re performing an abortion,” the student argued. “So, before that, they’ve already determined that it’s not a baby. I know you’re telling me that science has determined one thing, but…”
As the exchange grew increasingly heated another student appeared to want to support the pro-choice student on the other end of Hawkins' questioning, when they both admitted that a baby surviving an abortion is a rare circumstance.
"It is rare but it does happen because a group of abortion survivors were just at the White House," Hawkins responded, but the student insisted yet again that in her mind, an abortion survivor is not a child.
Hawkins also described a third-trimester abortion to the student, explaining that during the procedure, the abortionist injects the nearly full-term, unborn baby with digoxin to induce cardiac arrest so that the baby is delivered dead.
“So this baby comes out of utero,” Hawkins said, “and the digoxin hasn’t been successful in inducing cardiac arrest, and this baby is alive … so, do you think it’s a baby?”
“No,” insisted the student.
Hawkins continued to press, asking the pro-choice student to explain how exactly an abortionist “can determine it’s not a baby.”
The pro-choice student stood her ground, but failed to explain how an infant born alive after a botched abortion is not, in fact, a baby.
Hawkins is no stranger, however, to these sorts of conversations.
“This is the second year of my ‘Lies Feminists Tell’ speaking tour – where I expose the truth behind the self-proclaimed feminists’ lies about abortion, like ‘abortion doesn’t harm women’ and ‘women need abortion to be equal,’” Hawkins wrote in an email to supporters.