I note with horror that left-wing/liberal/progressive voices have been celebrating – yes, celebrating – the latest abortion legislation in New York state. It’s clearly designed to preempt any threat to the Roe v. Wade decision by a newly conservative Supreme Court. However, in doing so, it goes to lengths never before seen from – and certainly never before tolerated by – any legislature in this country.
“Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion. With the signing of this bill, we are sending a clear message that whatever happens in Washington, women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo after signing New York’s Reproductive Health Act on Tuesday night, January 22.
Not only will the law preserve access to abortions, it also removes abortion from the state’s criminal code. This would protect doctors or medical professionals who perform abortions from criminal prosecution. The law also now allows medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions in New York.
“The old law had criminal penalties. It was written that the doctor or professional could be held criminally liable,” Cuomo said during an interview on WNYC Wednesday.
The law also addresses late-term abortions. Under New York’s Reproductive Health Act, they can be performed after 24 weeks if the fetus is not viable or when necessary to protect the life of the mother.
. . .
“We need to be honest with the public and say that this bill does not simply codify Roe v. Wade… what this bill does is expand abortion up to birth and the third trimester,” State Assembly Rep. Nicole Malliotakis argued before the state legislature … She also argued that removing abortion from the criminal code would mean that if a fetus died as the result of an assault on a woman there would be no prosecution. “Being assaulted and losing your baby is not a woman’s choice,” she said.
There’s more at the link.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, proposed legislation in Virginia would have gone even further. If the makeup of the state legislature there changes, I have no doubt it’ll be resubmitted for renewed consideration.
A push by Virginia Democrats to loosen restrictions on late-term abortions is erupting into a fierce partisan clash because of a viral video in which a lawmaker acknowledges her legislation would allow abortions up until moments before birth.
Gov. Ralph Northam added gas to the fire Wednesday by describing a hypothetical situation in a radio interview where an infant who is severely deformed or unable to survive after birth could be left to die.
. . .
In the video recorded by the Republican Standard, Gilbert asks Tran whether her legislation would let a pregnant woman who is dilating request an abortion if a doctor certified that the woman’s mental health was impaired.
“My bill would allow that, yes,” Tran said.
Existing state law does not put an absolute time limit on abortions and Tran’s legislation does not alter that.
Her legislation would reduce the number of doctors who would have to certify late-term abortions are needed from three to one. It would also delete the requirement that doctors determine that continuing a pregnancy would “substantially and irremediably” impair a woman’s health. Instead doctors would only have to certify that the woman’s health was impaired.
. . .
Northam was asked about the video exchange during a regular radio appearance on WTOP-FM Wednesday.
The governor, who is a pediatric neurologist, defended the legislation and noted that late-term abortions are usually done because the infant is severely deformed or unable to survive after birth.
Northam said that if a woman were to desire an abortion as she’s going into labor, the baby would be “resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue” between doctors and the mother, leaving open what would happen next.
Again, more at the link.
The truth, of course, is that there is no medical reason to abort a child in the third trimester or approaching birth.
An OB/GYN who has delivered more than 2,500 babies went viral for his response to New York state’s new pro-abortion bill that allows abortion right up until birth in many cases.
. . .
Cuomo ordered that some buildings, including the One World Trade Center, be lighted in pink to celebrate the passage of the law.
“That’s actually sick,” [Dr. Omar L.] Hamada told “Fox & Friends” Monday morning, “that we’re celebrating the death of infants – of babies that could live outside of the womb right then. In fact, at the base of the World Trade Center…there is a memorial to 9/11 in which is listed the names of the victims and also the fetuses. I think there were four or six fetuses that were killed, and they list those as victims. And now they’re celebrating that they’re able to take the lives of those.”
The new law allows non-doctors to perform the procedure and allows for abortions up to the point of birth if the life or health of the mother is deemed at risk or the baby is not viable.
“There’s absolutely no reason to kill a baby before delivery in the third trimester,” he said. “Not a fetal or maternal indication – what we say in medicine. If there’s a problem, and there are problems in the third trimester, both with the babies and with the mom that require delivery, just deliver the baby. We don’t have to kill it.”
Dr. Hamada is quite right. As a pastor, I’ve given emergency baptisms to several extremely premature babies, one only a little over five months old – she looked like a small frog compared to my hand. I was summoned to the hospital urgently, because she was so premature she wasn’t expected to live. I baptized her with distilled water through a dropper-like instrument, reaching in through a port in the side of the incubator. Want to know something amazing? From the moment I baptized her – literally at that instant – she began to rally. Two nurses by my side watched in astonishment, exclaiming aloud, as monitors showed all her vital signs simultaneously beginning to improve. She went home after four months in the incubator, and as far as I know has had a normal childhood since then. The point of telling that tale is to show that, given good medical care and a reasonable chance, even very premature babies have a good chance of making it to term and living a normal life, given modern medical care. Abortion is not an inevitable or inescapable outcome.
I won’t go into all the arguments about the sanctity of human life, the humanity (or otherwise) of the fetus in the womb, etc. I have my views, conditioned by my faith, and others have different ones. That’s not the point of this discussion. In medical and scientific terms, irrespective of one’s moral code, there is no reason to abort a baby in the third trimester. Once that baby is born, it’s a living human being, and should be treated as such. To suggest that it might be left to die as a sort of post-partum abortion is prima facie absolutely sickening and immoral. Even if a law says it’s not criminal to do so, that doesn’t change the moral and ethical reality. A law could say that the sky is not blue, but red, but it wouldn’t change the reality we see with our own eyes every day!
As far as I’m concerned, any politician who votes for such a measure brands him- or herself as beyond the pale, and utterly unworthy of their office. Please God, may voters treat them as such!
Peter
Brilliant German ethicists during the Third Reich came up with the perfect phrase: Lebensunwertige Leben, or life unworthy of life. It's obviously time to employ it again.
the first time an "eye for an eye" was referenced in the Bible was when 2 idiots fighting should injury a pregnant woman. The baby's injury would be replicated on them: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Tell me that God isn't interested in the unborn.
God wiped out entire nations/tribes for sacrificing their young. I hold very little hope for this country. We ARE doing exactly the same thing….
Abortion up through week 40. That's just evil, Moloch worship.
see why I have to get out of Virginia? instead of the commonwealth state it has become the communist state. next comes the gulag, then the furnaces. so this pediatrician tries to legalize murder, but is trying to ban guns "for the children"? anybody else see an issue there?
If Virginians do not start recall elections, they will never survive the shame of this bill.
STxAR, the relevant verses in Exodus specify that if the woman miscarries but suffers no permanent injury to her own person, the perpetrators are fined. It's in the case of permanent injury to her that the "eye for an eye" etc. comes in.
It's also worth saying that even if you (incorrectly) construe those verses literally, it's still a limiting case. Even if the idiots were poor and the victim was wealthy or powerful, the most that could be done to the idiots is measure for measure.
But that's in the case of negligence. Deliberately ending the pregnancy… that's something else. Moloch worship indeed.
We're watching a progressive (with or without a capital p) effort to inure society first to the killing of infants, then the old, the ill, and the otherwise undesirable or unprofitable to the state.
We ARE sowing the wind.
Gee, it's usually not until the 30th to 60th trimester that parents begin really seriously considering a late term abortion…
I come from a different place from most of y'all. I think abortion should be legal. Restricted to the early months (how long does it take you to decide you don't want a kid?) but legal. Un-subsudised – never, EVER subsidized with tax money – but legal. I also think my position is based on personal belief, and that it cannot be proven by logic. So I'm prepared to accept that perfectly decent people may disagree with me.
I am increasingly convinced that I am going to see it banned everywhere but maybe Nevada, in my lifetime. And bullish*t like this is why. This is going to create a backlash that these morons cannot even imagine. Hell, they were shocked that the exposure of that ghoul, Kermit Gosnell, caused a backlash. An abattoir that THEY KNEW ABOUT but didn't close down or report…and they are outraged that Pro-Life forces are using it to increase regulation.
That's what you bargained for, you damned twits!
They just can't stop pushing. They can't give any ground. They can't see that late term abortion and opposition to parental notification are political poison. And they are capable of saying (as some benighted imbecile did) that they didn't close down Gosnell because it was so important that poor women have access to 'abortion services'.
And they don't grasp that that sound like "We don't care how many brown women died, so long as their babies does too. Yay eugenics!"
I don't think abortion is a 'right'. I simply think that an fetus isn't human and that therefore abortion should be legal. I don't expect to convince anybody, and I'm not outraged that abortion is going to be banned, eventually. But I am annoyed with the people who are going to GET abortion banned, because they seriously think they are fighting to keep it legal.
*spit*
This is what's known as "testing the waters." It was accepted – at least, so far – in New York, it remans to be seen if, or how, it will be accepted in Virginia, and what other states will follow suit.
Forty years have passed since the Supreme Court ruled abortion as an officially accepted standard social practice, as opposed to an extremely constrained medical procedure, and in that time it's become widespread.
Here's the point: this recent expansion of "abortion"allows the killing of a living child as opposed to hiding in the arguments around "fetal tissue." And, if it's acceptable – socially, medically, legally – to kill a living child because of one person's choice or inconvenience it's a very small step to killing any human for similar reasons.
Some European countries permit euthanasia in the case of the terminally ill in their final days for whom pain and its attendant suffering has exceeded the capacity of medical measures to reduce. Recent years have se the practice expand beyond those initially-established parameters, however.
During the discussions on Obamacare the term "death panels" came up, and were vehemently denied by the Leftist advocates of government authority over medical practice and availability. We will never hear the term "death panel" again, but rest assured we will see it practiced. This expansion of abortion is merely the first major step down that road, a necessary one to condition the populace to acceptance of the deliberately induced death of a living human.
IMHO it's even worse…
Sorry for the shameless self-promotion but I'm also hoping for traffic! 🙂
http://redpilljew.blogspot.com/2019/01/abortion-up-to-birth-proposed-in-va.html
My point, which a commenter also noted: if, holding an infant, a living breathing infant whose only "crime" is to be the natural consequence of an act done nine months earlier, someone is willing to murder that infant… what will that person be willing to do to an adult whose "crime" is opposing the great Socialist Utopia in which hunger, poverty, crime, war, etc., will all be cleansed from humanity?
@Billll: HA HA HA HA HA!
Except, as I noted at my blogpost above, there are already people who say that one should be able to terminate an infant up to, oh, year one. Because it's still dependent.
But why stop there? Why not two? Still dependent. Three? Four? I'd argue that, absent actual specific training, a child is not capable of being independent until 14-15. Of course I'm not arguing for abortion at all – but pointing out where the whole "dependent on a parent" slippery slope could be going.
At the other extreme…
My mother year summer 1960, pre-Roe NY. Baby likely female
and my mother was RH positive meaning the likelihood of survival
was unlikely at best. At 5 and half months she got very ill with "toxemia" as the baby had died. In 1960 survival of a late second trimester premie was likely die but one month more it was possible. Back then to get D&C (what we call an abortion now) you went before
the hospital board and they usually denied it. I knew a friends
mother that died from an atopic pregnancy (requires surgery and
also considered abotion), She was denied. A month and a half later they finally decided to approve a C-section and it was performed. The baby was literally rotting and the uterus was lost. The doctor said then if allowed to go any further Her death was a certainty
and it was a true miracle she survived that long. However the price
paid was years later kidney and liver disease likely due to the
toxic conditions a decade earlier.
Recovery took the better part of 6 months, she would never have even a remote chance at another child. At that time medicine knew RH factor and the risks for second of later children. She was with
three live and two still births fully sensitized and another if a girl was a certain to die in utero and likely kill her. A good Catholic she never was able to reconcile her beliefs with doctrine
and stopped attending church soon after.
That was life for a women pre Roe.
Part of the whole thing about abortion is access to sexual health services and even (gasp) birth control) those things required
to allow a women to both live and care for existing children or
ideally if wished, have more.
So really, first fact check some of the reported crap. Then sit
down and ask what would happen if…?
Am I pro-abortion, hell no. Pro health and services to insure that,
yes. I don't get to tell anyone if they should or should not as its
not my life in that balance. By the same token anyone trying to
control my life does so at their own risk.
Eck!
@Eck: That's tragic indeed – but if the baby had died, it was not abortion. That's always been Catholic teaching. In that situation, blame the doctor(s) and the hospital for a complete misunderstanding and/or misapplication of what they thought was right, but was not, in fact, correct.
I completely agree with you that sexual health services and birth control are infinitely preferable to abortion. If you don't want to have the latter, you pretty much have to provide the former – or abstain from sex until you're in a position to bring the child to term and afford its upbringing for 18-20 years.
I'm not sure about "controlling someone's life", though. Who speaks for the child? What about its life? If "not controlling someone's life" means permitting them to murder another innocent human being . . . that's a real moral conundrum. For me, it's not moral or ethical at all: and even in the most extreme and unfortunate of cases, where there's no alternative (and yes, I admit those cases exist), I still can't regard it as ethically right. It becomes a choice between two very great evils, neither of which is morally acceptable – but one of which is inevitable.
I know others will differ from that perspective, of course.
My unhappy experience is that, while many Liberal women are mildly pro-choice, any Pro-Choice activist – anyone who will actually join a protest or a march – is likely to have pro-eugenics tendencies. They may be shocked if you point it out to them, genuinely shocked (and sometimes more than a little ashamed), but the sentiment is there.
Camel's nose under the tent. How soon before old or chronically ill become the next target?
We just can't get away from the rot that Woodrow Wilson and his band of howler monkeys infected this nation with. You know, the things that the Nazis would also enact a few years later. Murder by State of undesirables and expensive patients, forced sterilization, abortion… All linked to WW and his Progressives.
God hasn't forsaken us. We have forsaken God.
I believe we have souls, and that killing an ensouled being is against God's will (usual caveats about self defense and justice here). When does the Lord endow us with a soul? Before birth, during birth, afterwards? Not knowing, I am against abortion.
@tweell:
Ponder the meaning of Ps. 51, esp. v. 5-6.
Just saying.
And these bills are the Left, naked and unashamed in their worship of Moloch, and there'll be reckonings for that, both here, and hereafter, judging purely from human history.
I have to disagree that there is no possible medical reason for a late term abortion.
It is rare, but possible that an accident makes the survival of child and mother unlikely and the abortion significantly increases the likelihood of the mothers survival.
Something to consider is that these bills allow abortion up through birth for the sake of the mother's "health." Does that include mental health? Like if I have a baby I will be depressed?
Sure it does.
This legalizes abortion of babies up until birth pretty much for any reason a woman wants.
The people supporting these bill have no excuse, other than a seared soul.
@MadMcAl
Show your work please, otherwise that's hypothetical nonsense.
A fetus is viable at 28 weeks. Some even earlier.
If you have time to do a D&C, you have time to do a cesarean, and save two lives.
I do critical trauma for a living: break it down for me.