A major pro-life victory was had in New York this week when a bill that would have elevated abortion to a fundamental right and permitted unlimited abortions was shot down in the state Senate because there were not enough votes to pass it.
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo
Bloomberg is reporting that a group of Democrats who run the senate along with Republicans introduced nine of the 10 Women’s Equality Agenda measures proposed by Catholic governor Andrew Cuomo. These included enhanced penalties for human traffickers and legal damages for women who are not paid equally.
The one item left off the Agenda was the abortion plank which would have decriminalized abortion after 24 weeks when a woman’s “health”, not just her life, was at risk.
Cuomo, who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2016, said he wanted this measure in the bill because it would protect women if the U.S. Supreme Court ever decides to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal in the U.S.
Cuomo called the failure of the senate to introduce the measure “a mistake” because this would be something that would come back to haunt the lawmakers in the next election.
As Life News reports, it might hurt lawmakers in the future, but it will save a lot of babies in a city where approximately 40 percent of pregnancies ends in abortion. Among African Americans in New York City, the number climbs to 60 percent.
“The governor’s Women’s Equality Act is nothing more than a Trojan Horse— a beautifully gift-wrapped package of death and destruction,” says Lori Kehoe of the New York State Right to Life Committee.
“The Governor’s newly released abortion agenda involves enshrining a barbaric federal law from the last century. Under Roe v. Wade, abortionists like Kermit Gosnell can kill babies with a heartbeat, babies capable of feeling pain, babies who are full term and waiting to be born. Instead of protecting these children, the governor is dragging New York in the wrong direction. Current law states that only a duly licensed physician may perform an abortion. This bill repeals that section and allows anyone to perform an abortion.”
Pro-lifers had plenty of reason to cheer the death of this bill which would, among other things, allow non-physicians to perform abortions; remove criminal penalties from unlawful abortions; prevent an unborn child who was the intended victim of a crime from being recognized as a victim; prevent any limitation on the use of taxpayer-supported Medicaid funds to pay for abortion; and redefine pregnancy as beginning at the time of implantation rather than at fertilization as all medical school textbooks define.
Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, told LifeNews the measure, had it passed, would have protected grisly late-term abortion practitioners like Kermit Gosnell.
“As the inhuman details of Kermit Gosnell’s ‘house of horrors’ trial continue to resonate, it is irresponsible for Governor Cuomo to advance a ‘Back-Alley Abortionist Empowerment Act’ seeking to remove all medically and legally appropriate protections for women and girls considering abortion,” Yoest said. “Why should women die through the misdeeds of New York abortionists unregulated, unmonitored and free to provide horrific care?”
The current legislative session ends tomorrow, which means there is no chance that this radical abortion bill will be passing anytime soon.
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