By Dave Andrusko
Yesterday NRL News Today ran a very thoughtful statement from Greg Pfundstein, President of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, under the headline, “On New York Governor Cuomo’s Proposal to Help Foster MORE Abortions in New York.”
Mr. Pfundstein’s point was as simple as it was devastating: “The notion that women need more access to abortion in New York is simply preposterous.”
So what is the “Reproductive Health Act,” which, I am told, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) passionately embraces? To quote New York State Right to Life Committee’s analysis,
“This bill is the product of the extremist pro-abortion lobby that takes exception to reasonable, common sense laws, such as parental consent and limits on government payment for abortions. The advocates of this bill are the same who oppose the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban that the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in 2007.”
Let me make a couple of comments. First, everyone knows that Gov. Cuomo is already making plans to run for President in 2016. He is handsome and charismatic and is the son of the pro-abortion former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, who also considered running for President.
For those who are too young to remember, Mario Cuomo patented the “personally opposed to abortion but…” position. His son barely bothers with making the bogus distinction.
Second, the Reproductive Health Act is presented as a “codification” of Roe, another rhetorical ploy to hide just how far the law would go. Thanks to the New York State RTL Committee, here is some of the fallout, should the measure become law:
*Remove criminal penalties even from unlawful abortions;
*Prevent an unborn child who is the intended victim of a crime from being recognized as a victim;
*Prevent any limitation on use of taxpayer funds to curtail New York’s Medicaid policy of paying for abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy;
*Deceitfully redefine pregnancy as beginning at implantation – not fertilization;
*Falsely redefine fetal (child) viability and
*Unleash new assaults on the consciences of those who oppose participating in abortion - health care professionals, hospitals, hospital residents, and health insurance providers.
I asked Barbara Meara, chair of NYRTL Committee, to elaborate on the governor’s highly visible support for the act. She explained,
“It’s her body. It’s her choice.” Gov. Cuomo repeated this line three times, shouting it to a filled auditorium during his State of the State speech on January 9. Then he went on to invoke the names of his three daughters to show how important he believes “reproductive rights” (read abortion) is for the women in his life and all New York State women.
What Gov. Cuomo ignores is that the tiny human being developing in a woman’s womb is not the woman’s body .
He or she is a distinct human being with a heart beating since 3 weeks after conception, circulating blood that is separate and distinct from the mother’s. He or she has recognizable brain waves since 6 weeks and unique fingerprints since 8 weeks after conception.
And “her choice”? Frequently, it is not “her Choice,” but the choice of the husband or boyfriend, her parents or friends who don’t realize that the life destroyed in an abortion may also destroy the mother’s physical, mental and emotional well being and make it difficult or impossible for the young woman to have a baby in the future.
The pro-abortion mindset is stepped in certain “givens,” many of which are on display in this piece of proposed legislation. To name just a few, they include paying for as many abortions as humanly possible, using taxpayer money; making sure that when even wanted children are killed by criminals, there cannot be a separate, additional penalty for taking the child’s life; and co-opting and conscripting everyone into this grisly business, regardless of their personal moral, ethical, and/or religious objections.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan wrote the governor a letter dated January 9. As did Mr. Pfundstein, Archbishop Dolan references the state’s horrific abortion rate which is “incredibly, double the national average. Sadly, nearly 4 in10 pregnancies statewide end in abortion. In some parts of New York City, the rate is higher than 60 percent, mostly in impoverished Black and Latino communities.”
Dolan writes that although he and Cuomo obviously disagree on the legality of abortion,
“Surely we are in equally strong agreement that the abortion rate in New York is tragically high. There was a time when abortion supporters claimed they wanted to make abortion ‘safe, legal, and rare.’ Yet this measure is specifically designed to expand access to abortion, and therefore to increase the abortion rate. I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one.”
But one would have to ask, what is the evidence, strong or otherwise, that Gov. Cuomo believes the state abortion rate is “tragically high”?