On March 25, the New York State Assembly passed a bill, allowing mothers to seek an abortion for an expanded set of reasons in the third trimester. Currently third trimester abortion is only permitted if the mother’s life is at risk. The proposed law would allow abortion for any reason deemed “relevant to the well-being of the patient” including physical, emotional, psychological, familial factors, and the mother’s age.
The bill condones a procedure that kills the preborn child with a shot of poison administered through the baby’s heart, and those who perform the abortion may not even be abortionists.
Women will be allowed to abort their children throughout all nine months of pregnancy for any reason “relevant to the well-being of the patient.” This is essentially why women have abortion in the first place, and it’s certainly not compelling enough to permit the horrific late-term abortions the bill would allow.
To add insult to injury, the bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Deborah Glick said in light of the bills passage that “there are many, many women who are totally and completely thrilled that they had the opportunity to control their lives and what their future would be.”
While one could be “totally and completely thrilled” to plan the future, in no way must the murder of an innocent preborn child fit into the equation.
While Glick does admit that “some” women regret their abortions, she does so with a flippant remark —such women are certainly not the focus of her statements.
How could one say that a woman coerced into her abortion is “totally and completely thrilled” to do something she doesn’t wish to do? Even women who do choose to abort based on their own accord wouldn’t exactly be described to have such feelings. A woman aborts her child because she didn’t want to be pregnant. It’s unlikely a woman would be “thrilled” to involve herself in getting rid of something she did not initially plan on. Even Planned Parenthood and NARAL refer to abortion as a “difficult decision,” which doesn’t coincide well with the adjective “thrilling.”
New York has been dealing with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s extreme abortion agenda with the provision introduced in the Women’s Equality Act in 2013. The bill has now been broken down into standalone bills, including this expansion of late-term abortion. While it still must pass the Senate, the dangerous pro-abortion forces in the state cannot be underestimated.
While it is significant that states have passed 20 week bans on abortion, and the federal government will hopefully be voting on such a version soon, New York is moving in the opposite direction. With any hope, pro-life lawmakers in the New York Senate may stop this bill from becoming law.
EDITOR NOTE: This piece has been updated to clarify the manner in which the proposed law would expand third trimester abortion.
