Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This law legalizes abortion in New York throughout all nine months of pregnancy, even up to dilation. It repeals the safeguard requiring all abortions be performed by a licensed physician. It decriminalizes all state abortion laws, and it removes all rights and protections from the unborn by defining a “person” as “a human being who has been born and is alive.” Even this definition, however, is revoked for the child who is accidentally born alive.

New York has legalized abortion up to birth, and beyond. It is now legal to neglect, choke, or smother a baby that somehow survived the lethal injection and knife cuts designed to kill during the abortion procedure.

To put a fine point on it, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) on January 22, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This law legalizes abortion in New York throughout all nine months of pregnancy, even up to dilation. It repeals the safeguard requiring all abortions be performed by a licensed physician. It decriminalizes all state abortion laws, and it removes all rights and protections from the unborn by defining a “person” as “a human being who has been born and is alive.” Even this definition, however, is revoked for the child who is accidentally born alive.

The only restriction in the law is written to ensure that there are no restrictions whatsoever. It decrees that abortion may be performed “within 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or at any time when necessary to protect a patient’s life or health” (Art 25-A).

Free Abortion on Demand

This restriction mirrors that of the original Supreme Court decisions of 1973. Roe v. Wade allowed restrictions to abortion (the threshold of viability being generally thought to be 23–24 weeks at that time) except when necessary to protect the life and health of the mother.

The companion decision, Doe v. Bolton, handed down with Roe, defined the health of the mother so broadly that it effectively removed the restrictions set in place by Roe. In Doe, the court ruled, “The medical judgment [for a late-term abortion] may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.”

In RHA, by leaving the “health” of the mother undefined and broadly understood, NY lawmakers made abortion legal for any reason or no reason, at any point during the pregnancy and paid for with taxpayer funds. Our opponents see it this way, too. They cheered,

“Free abortion on demand! We can do it; yes, we can!”

In triumph, Cuomo ordered one World Trade Center to be lit up in pink.

The defenders of the RHA assure us that no woman would undergo late-term abortion unless something terrible and life-threatening was involved. Such a thing is “extremely rare,” it is said. Not true. New York’s own abortion statistics for 2016 reports 1,763 abortions were performed at 20 weeks gestation or later. Even if true, how does killing the infant born alive during an attempted abortion effectively save the mother’s life? In truth, there is no medical condition in late-term pregnancy in which abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother.

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