New York Pro-Life Advocates Must Stop Governor Eliot Spitzer’s Abortion War 
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by Alice Lemos
March 10, 2008
LifeNews.com Note: Alice Lemos is a spokesperson for New Yorkers for Parental Rights and a single parent and cancer survivor. She is a contributing writer for Human Life Review and holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Brown University. She is active in Republican politics and her proudest achievement is her son, Jesse.
The rumor is that Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York State would like to become president one day. Hopefully that won’t happen since apparently over two thirds of New York voters – an overwhelmingly Blue State – disapprove of his first year in office.
During his first year, he fought with State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (of course, a Republican) and attempted to sic the State troopers on him to keep track of his comings and goings for the purpose of sliming him.
He also tried to force through a bill which would have given drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens, a bill so liberal that even the super liberal Mayor of New York City, Mike Bloomberg, disapproved.
Spitzer’s latest gambit is the radicalization of New York’s already liberal abortion laws at a time when there is growing disapproval; – even in New York State – of abortion on demand. If Spitzer should succeed, New York would become the Mecca of Late Term Abortion, a title that no state should be proud of.
During a debate at Pace University before the election, both Spitzer and his Republican opponent, John Faso (a fiscal and social conservative who unfortunately received little backing) were asked if they would sign a bill to ban partial birth abortion, a ghastly procedure which is defended by few New Yorkers.
Faso said that he would sign it, but then Attorney General Spitzer stated that he would not sign it “unless it contained an exception for the woman’s health” (which we know is the bogus exception that abortionists can use to justify any and all abortions). Spitzer went even further, by attacking pro lifers and claming that “they harassed women near clinics."
Spitzer also bragged of the fact that Planned Parenthood had endorsed both him and his running mate, David Patterson.
Spitzer has had a long history of dislike for pro lifers and for crisis pregnancy centers.
In 1998, at the behest of NARAL, he attempted to shut down several of them by claming that “they give out false information” to women (without bothering to ascertain the false information given to women by Planned Parenthood who still refers to unborn babies as “blobs of cells” or the “product of conception”.
Eventually Spitzer backed down after being blasted by columnist Michelle Malkin and by the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina, among others. Spitzer, by the way, became Attorney General because Republican candidate Dennis Vacco had foolishly turned down the Right to Life line, giving Spitzer his small margin of victory so that he could prepare his path to the governorship.
Now Spitzer’s radical abortion agenda is being played out with the introduction of RHAPP, the so-called “Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act”, which would make legalized abortion a civil right in New York This bill, sponsored by Democrat Andrea Stewart Cousins in the State Senate (held by the Republicans by only one vote as the party goes to extinction in New York State) would allow non doctors to perform abortions; allow the abortionist to determine the “viability” of the fetus; would not allow the criminal prosecution of an abortionist who maims or kills a woman; would obliterate the conscience clause for Catholic hospitals, in effect forcing them to perform abortions, and would force religious institutions to pay for abortion coverage in their health insurance policies.
The irony, of course, is that even in Blue State New York the abortion rate is falling, apparently to the chagrin of Spitzer, Patterson, and most of the Democratic members of the State Senate and State Assembly.
In the last special election, a pro life Democrat defeated a pro choice Republican, proving that the local GOP has lost its way by fielding candidates that violate the beliefs of what is left of its base. It will be a sad day should this bill come to a vote and pass because of the demise of a once vibrant GOP that, ten years ago, had a U.S. Senator, a Governor and the state attorney general despite a much higher enrollment in the Democratic party.
Should this bill pass, the “underground radical feminist railroad” which brings in underage girls from Pennsylvania and other states which have parental consent laws, will be emboldened and countless women and young girls will be maimed in risky abortion procedures performed by non-doctors. And the authorities will not be able to prosecute these abortionists.
At a time when the country is turning against abortion, presenting abortion as the only state sanctioned “choice” would be travesty as well as a tragedy.
