Cuomo’s Bill for Late-Term Abortions Would Protect Kermit Gosnells

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 4, 2013   |   10:20AM   |   Albany, NY

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is finally moving ahead with the pro-abortion bill pro-life groups have been warning about for months. The measure would take virtually every pro-life law off the books and promote late-term abortions.

New York state Senate Republicans are slamming the proposal New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing in the New York state legislature that pro-life advocates say would promote late-term abortions.

The bill, pro-life advocates say, would elevate abortion to a fundamental right and have New York on record saying the state can’t discriminate on abortion in benefits or services or anything else it provides.

The bill is expected to easily pass the State Assembly but to have a harder time in the Senate, where Republicans have already pledged to block it.

Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest says the measure would protect grisly late-term abortion practitioners like Kermit Gosnell. She said that, despite the fact that New York has the highest percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion of any state in the nation, Cuomo has launched an effort that will further increase the incidence of abortion in the state.

“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?

Currently AUL Action is actively working in New York to protect New York women and girls who would be vulnerable to present and future Kermit Gosnells, should the legislation advance.

“The technical impact of Gov. Cuomo’s efforts would be to block commonsense regulations of abortion—an often dangerous medical procedure, especially later in pregnancy,” said Yoest. “He essentially creates a ‘Back-Alley Abortionists Empowerment Act’ that will remove the few legal protections in place in New York and sanction an environment where more women will be victimized and hurt by an unregulated and unrestrained abortion industry.”

“If Cuomo’s legislation succeeds, New York will be sanctioning unrestricted, virtually unregulated, and taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, making it the most radically pro-abortion state in the nation,” she added.

AUL Actions’s legal team notes that the proponents of the bill claim to be addressing a problem with access to abortion—a problem that clearly does not exist in New York. According to the most recent data from the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion-industry think tank, 33 percent of New York pregnancies ended in abortion in 2008. More pregnancies ended in abortion in New York than in any of the other 50 states. Consider this chart from the Guttmacher Institute:

abortion-chart.png

Other abortion advocates have argued that New York needs Governor Cuomo’s legislation to ensure that abortion is permitted and protected in the state should Roe v. Wade be overturned or further undermined. However, in the 1994 decision Hope v. Perales, the due process provision of the New York Constitution was interpreted as protecting a woman’s right to abortion in the state.

Consider a few points from AUL Action’s survey of New York law:

  • New York does not have an informed consent law for abortion and does not protect the right of parents to be involved in the abortion decisions of their minor daughters.
  • New York taxpayers are already required by statute to fund “medically necessary” abortions for women receiving public assistance.
  • New York hospitals providing emergency care for sexual assault victims must provide life-ending drugs mislabeled as “emergency contraception.”
  • New York health plans that provide prescription coverage must provide coverage for contraception, including life-ending drugs mislabeled as “emergency contraception.” The provision includes an exemption so narrow it excludes the ability of most employers and insurers with moral or religious objections from exercising the exemption.

“In light of recent, tragic deaths at the hands of Big Abortion, advancing legislation that enables abortionists to harm more women and girls makes no legal sense at all,” said Dr. Yoest. “The headlines are full of news of women’s health being neglected in abortion clinics. Governor Cuomo should not champion a bill that would unleash such victimization on New York women.”

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The New York Right to Life Committee provided LifeNews with more details on what Cuomo is pushing in the legislature.

The radical abortion bill, the “Reproductive Health Act” would make changes to current NYS law that represent the opinion of only a tiny subset of New Yorkers who hold extremist pro-abortion views. By writing “fundamental reproductive rights” into NYS state law, the bill would provide full legal cover to the tragic and well-entrenched practice of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy.

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.

S.438 is meant to ensure that the radical abortion industry in New York can continue to thrive without reservation, or common-sense protections for anyone other than abortionists, to address its out of control practice in New York State.

The Reproductive Health Act would, among other things:

  • Allow non-physicians to perform abortions;
  • 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