Congress has recently been presented with the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which is a bill that, if passed, would guarantee the same medical care to infants that survive abortions as would be given to any other child born at the same age. It would extend and clarify the legal rights of born-alive abortion survivors, who have already been defined as a human person in a law passed in 2002.

However, this bill, proposed by Republican leaders, has failed to get passed in the Senate and has been denied a vote on the House floor 25 times.

This bill should not be causing controversy.

It explicitly states its relevance to only those children who survive an abortion, so it's not a matter of pro-life or pro-choice. After birth, a baby is undeniably a human person, despite what you may say about it when it's in the womb. Care to babies after birth should not be dependent on the way that they were conceived or the terms of their birth.

A human is a human despite the circumstances of their existence.

All of the arguments that pro-choice supporters use to defend abortion are rendered useless in their reasoning for not supporting this bill. A baby that survives an abortion is its own person with its own rights. It has nothing to do with a woman's freedom or her body; the care that a child receives after birth has no effect on either.

Those in support of denying needed medical care to a child after birth are pushing an agenda of infanticide, which we should not stand for. As a country, we should not let ourselves become divided by politics and instead come together to protect the most innocent and vulnerable lives in our society.

We should hold our leaders accountable and encourage them to vote against injustices to children postpartum.

We have the power to influence the passing of this bill, and we should do everything that we can to make sure that it gets past the Congressional floor.