Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is demanding that his state’s legislature pass a bill that would facilitate abortions at all stages of pregnancy — including up to birth in cases where the life of the mother is supposedly at risk. Appearing with Hillary Clinton at a pro-abortion rally at Manhattan’s Barnard College, Cuomo said that he would not sign the state’s 2020 budget package unless lawmakers pass a pair of bills that would aggressively liberalize the state’s abortion law and increase the availability of a wide range of contraceptives.
“I will not pass a budget,” declared Cuomo to the cheering crowd, “until the Reproductive Health Act and the Contraceptive Care Act are passed, period.”
The Reproductive Health Act would re-enforce a pregnant woman’s “fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion.” Most significantly, it would permit abortion “within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or at any time when necessary to protect a patient’s life or health.”
The legislation also defines a “person” as a “human being who has been born and is alive” — effectively dehumanizing pre-born babies regardless of the viability of their lives. Additionally, the bill would remove any reference to abortion from the state’s penal code.
Among other elements, the Comprehensive Contraception Coverage Act would require “health insurance policies to include coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptive drugs, devices, and products.”
As it turned out, Cuomo’s bold rhetoric was little more than empty political posturing, since the Democrat-controlled New York Legislature has indicated it will easily pass the bills, beginning with the Reproductive Health Act on January 22 — the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling effectively legalizing the killing of pre-born babies.
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Among the conservative, Christian groups expressing their opposition to the murderous legislation was the group New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which charged that “the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) is an extreme and unnecessary piece of legislation that would endanger women and unborn children. The RHA would allow non-physicians to perform abortions, would take abortion-related crimes off the books in cases where pregnant women miscarry after being assaulted, and would repeal existing protections for children born alive following attempted late-term abortions.”
Another group expressing its vehement opposition to the RHA was Feminists Choosing Life of New York. In a letter submitted to the New York Times, Kelly Brunacini, a member of the group’s board of directors, emphasized that “one point of opposition is the heinous legalization of abortion during the second and third trimester of pregnancy through the inclusion of a broad health exception allowing women to abort viable fetuses for essentially any reason, including economic or familial health.”
Brunacini noted that “the vast majority of Americans, including in New York, oppose these late-term abortions. As a New Yorker, Democrat and feminist, I can’t help but wonder what history will say about a people who allowed the legalized killing of fully formed human beings for the sake of exerting political dominance.”
As for “health of the mother” implications embedded in the RHA bill, ChristianNews.net noted that the late U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop pointed out that with the available medical technology, abortion is never required to protect the life of a mother. “Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen,” said Koop. “In my 36 years of pediatric surgery, I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother’s life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, the doctor will induce labor or perform a Caesarean section.”
Koop added that the goal of the doctor “is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby’s life is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.”
Image: flickr.com
