The Tablet Staff

WINDSOR TERRACE — President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 23 that he will sign an executive order to ensure that babies born alive are given proper medical care, a move that is likely to win praise from Catholics and other pro-life supporters.

The executive order is aimed at ensuring that all babies born alive, including those born prematurely or ones that survive abortions, receive medical care.

“Today I am announcing that I will be signing the ‘Born Alive’ executive order to assure that all precious babies born alive, no matter their circumstances, receive the medical care that they deserve. This is our sacrosanct moral duty,” Trump said.

The president made his announcement during a pre-recorded address to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C.

Trump also told religious leaders gathered at the prayer breakfast that his administration will increase federal funding for neonatal research.

The president’s action comes as laws seeking to protect babies born after failed abortions have stalled in Congress.

One bill, the Born-Alive Infant Abortion Survivors Act, stalled in the House of Representatives in the 2019-2020 session because sponsors could not get a sufficient number of members to sign a discharge petition to bring the proposed legislation to the floor for a vote.

“Our nation is strong because of Catholics and all people of faith,” the president said in his prayer breakfast address. “We believe in the joy of family, the blessing of freedom and the dignity of work, and the eternal truth that every child, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God,” 

“I will always protect the vital role of religion and prayer in American society, and I will always defend the sacred right to life,” Trump added.

Trump has blasted Democrats for supporting late-term abortion and has singled out New York, where the Reproductive Health Act permits abortions in the third trimester in certain cases.

The president is on record as being opposed to state laws that expand access to late-term abortions.

Trump’s announcement received a positive reaction from pro-life advocates in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

Cathy Donohoe, president of the Board of Directors of The Bridge to Life, a pregnancy care center in Flushing, said Trump did the right thing. “We’re very elated,” she told The Tablet.

Donohoe attended the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in 2017, when the keynote speaker was Vice President Mike Pence.

But Donohoe also said it was a sad state of affairs that President Trump had to take the extraordinary step of issuing an executive order to ensure something so basic as health care for newborns. “It’s something that should be automatic,” she said.

The article was updated to include comments from Cathy Donohoe.