CUOMO’S GIFT TO ABORTION EXTREMISTS
GOV. Cuomo isn’t shy about his proposed budget for 2019, crowing on his Web page that he is “Realizing the Promise of Progressive Government.” The promise of this particular style of government seems to be to fulfill every liberal dream about abortion in one fell swoop, or at least the dreams that haven’t already come true in a state that has the highest rate of abortion in the United States.
Across the country, 19 percent of all pregnancies are terminated. In New York City, over one in three babies are aborted, resulting in an astonishing ratio of 505 abortions per 1,000 live births. Even more shocking is the ratio for African-Americans: 1,038 abortions per 1,000 live births — meaning more African-American babies are being aborted in the city than are being born. These statistics reflect New York’s liberal abortion laws, which provide public funding for abortion and do not require parental notice or consent for minor girls.
Cuomo isn’t satisfied. He has promised to advance women’s equality, which for him, judging by his budget proposal, is synonymous with even more abortion. His so called “women’s agenda” budget bill takes aim at the modest safety regulations enshrined in state law, including the requirement that the procedures be conducted by licensed physicians and the requirement that second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital setting.
How it is in women’s best interest to lower the not-very-high safety bar for the elective surgical procedure is anyone’s guess.
It’s also not clear how women will benefit from the elimination of a penal law that makes it a homicide to intentionally cause the death of an unborn child over 24 weeks gestation. The law now adds a felony criminal charge against the perpetrator of a violent attack on a pregnant woman that results in the death of her child. This works to protect women from domestic violence, which has been shown to increase when a woman is pregnant and the father resents the coming child.
New York law calls an unborn child killed by violent means in the third trimester a “person.” The governor’s budget bill amends as follows: “‘Person’ when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.”
This designation of personhood will make no sense to a bereaved mother whose unborn child dies after a violent attack. It certainly didn’t to Michelle Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant when she was attacked with a butcher knife by a woman who lured Wilkins into her home by pretending to sell baby clothes. Though her baby died, her attacker wasn’t charged with murder thanks to Colorado’s laws.
Cuomo’s budget bill also eliminates legal protection for born children — those who have slipped through the abortionist’s fingers and inadvertently survived the procedure.
In second-trimester abortions, which are often performed after a fetus has reached the stage of viability, a fetus sometimes slips out intact through the birth canal before the abortionist has time to stop their heart with an injection. That baby then takes a breath, ready to fight for his or her life. State law now gives full legal protection to these children, as setting them aside to die is considered infanticide. If Cuomo’s bill passes, a physician trained in fetal resuscitation will no longer be required to assist the untrained abortionist in these complex late-term procedures. The governor’s bill explicitly repeals this compassionate measure as part of his “Ever Upward Promise to Women.” How puzzling.
In short, the “women’s agenda” bill appears to be less about women’s needs than about pandering to a hard-left base that is committed to expanding late-term abortion all the way through the ninth month of pregnancy — a radical position rejected by most Americans.
A recent poll found that 76 percent of Americans support limiting abortion to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy. Only extreme abortion-rights ideologues reject humane protections for unborn children who are viable and proven able to feel pain upon being dismembered without anesthesia. Cuomo is siding with a vocal, but very small, segment of the liberal base.
A “women’s agenda” should be about women’s real needs, not political positioning. If women in New York are resorting to abortion at sky-high rates, maybe what they need is relief from the pressures that drive them to the procedure. Perhaps a “women’s agenda” bill ought to address the high cost of living that makes bringing a child into the world so difficult, the breakdown of the family due to crime and other urban pathologies and the lack of pregnancy-support centers for women who would love to keep their children.
Instead, Cuomo wants to make the world a little less safe for women driven to abortion, and a lot less safe for babies, both born and unborn.