London, England, Feb 8, 2008 / 05:08 pm (CNA).- A government report in the UK has revealed that babies who survive abortions are refused medical treatment and often left to die.  According to Lifesite News, at least 66 infants survived abortions in one year alone.  Thirty-three of the survivors lived for an hour while one struggled for life for 10 hours.

The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH) report shows that once a child slated for death by abortion is born alive, no medical help is offered.

The CEMACH Perinatal Mortality report, which gathered its data from hospitals in England and Wales during 2005, reveals that 16 babies who survived abortion were born after 22 weeks old. The remaining 50 were under that age. This is the first acknowledgement by the government that the surviving children are left to die, although it is not the first report in the UK.

In 2005, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published the findings of Dr. Shantala Vadeyar, a researcher at Manchester's St. Mary's Hospital, who said that children as young as 18 weeks had been known to survive for a time outside the womb after attempted abortions. Vadeyar revealed that in the northwest, between 1996 and 2001, at least 31 children survived attempted abortions.

When the 2005 report was published, Dr. Trevor Stammers, a senior lecturer at St. George's University Hospital in London, described the effect that a baby born alive has on an abortionist, saying, "Despite all attempts at emotional neutrality, the heart does not work that way when you get a baby in front of you that colleagues on another floor of the same building would be trying to keep alive."

The issue of babies surviving abortion in countries where the practice is legal has been addressed in the United States. In 2005, President Bush signed into law the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act which ensures that any infant fully born, who shows signs of life, is considered a human person entitled to the full protection of the law.

The bill was passed in Congress after legislators heard testimony of children being left to die in abortion facilities.

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