Just a week after New York legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, disturbing headlines continue to surface as states compete for the tainted title of “most pro-abortion state in the U.S.”
This week, Virginia’s House of Delegates rejected a bill to expand third-trimester abortions all the way through labor (yes—labor), and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam made some confusing remarks defending it on live radio.
“If a mother is in labor…the infant would be delivered,” he said. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother.”
Denying normal standards of care to an innocent child, mere moments after birth, is, of course, a barbaric low for any elected leader to entertain. And so is the killing of a defenseless baby moments before birth. Yet such ugly defenses of outright slaughter are perfectly commonplace in state legislatures across the country.
Now, fearing the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the recently reconfigured, conservative Supreme Court, pro-abortion politicians, like those in New York and Virginia, are reworking state laws to enshrine abortion as an extra-protected right. Vermont, where abortion is already legal through all nine months of pregnancy, is considering legislation that does just that. Ninety-one co-sponsors have signed on in support of the bill.
Nearby, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo says she is prepared to sign the “Reproductive Health Care Act,” a similar bill that would dismantle the state’s 24-week abortion restriction, allowing abortion for practically any reason all the way through birth. It also wipes away the state’s ban on partial-birth abortion.
Two-thousand miles away, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham says she plans to sign a bill that also codifies abortion as a right in state law and repeals a pre-Roe abortion restriction from 1969 that is currently unenforceable. Although New Mexico already permits late-term abortions on viable, pain-capable babies, this bill would ensure that remains the case if Roe is reversed.
While this bill doesn’t repeal the state’s partial-birth abortion ban, it does remove important conscience protections that safeguard nurses and doctors from being forced to participate in an abortion.
Tweet This: Did you know? Abortion is already legal through birth in 8 states and D.C.
On first glance, these bills, like the New York law and Virginia bill, appear to contain significant restrictions for late-term abortions. But as many have pointed out, those “restrictions” are actually a very broad “health” exception for abortions after viability (the point at which an unborn baby can live outside of the womb).
This exception would allow women to abort unborn babies up to nine months of pregnancy for any “health” reason, including “age, economic, social and emotional factors,” as defined by the Supreme Court of the United States in Doe v. Bolton.
While legalized late-term abortions are nothing new in the U.S. (there are approximately 13,000 each year), the Democrats’ renewed gusto to expand the carnage is chilling. Whether doubling down on late-term abortion or clearing away safeguards against partial-birth abortion, this competition to achieve the most radical policy in the country is one we can all live without.