Fresh on the heels of the so-called Reproductive Healthcare Act in New York, signed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, which allows abortions up to 40 weeks, a similar effort to legalize such late-term abortion in Virginia was narrowly defeated in committee on Tuesday.
In Virginia, Republicans are in the majority in the House of Delegates, where a subcommittee voted 5-3 to table H.R. 2491, dubbed the Repeal Act. All Republicans on the committee voted to table — and essentially kill — the effort to legalize full-term abortions, while all the Democrats on the committee opted to support the pro-abortion bill’s enactment.
Democrat Delegate Kathy Tran, under questioning, admitted that her legislation would permit abortions at 40 weeks. Forty weeks is a full-term abortion. Tran argued that full-term abortion would be allowed if it were considered necessary to protect a woman’s mental or physical health. (This, despite that there is no evidence that such late third-trimester abortions are ever necessary for a woman’s physical health. Mental health, of course, is like the proverbial loophole big enough to drive a truck through.)
On Facebook, House Republicans posted, “Virginia House Democrats proposed legislation to allow abortions up to just seconds before that precious child takes their first breath. Watch for yourself. Thankfully, our strong conservative majority was able to defeat this bill.”
In a tweet, the Virginia House GOP added, “Heartbreaking. This isn’t in New York, this isn’t in California, this happened just this week right here in Virginia.”
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In an effort to make clear just how extreme the bill is, Republican House member Todd Gilbert, the majority leader, asked Tran if her bill would make it legal for a pregnant woman to have an abortion even after dilation has begun.
Tran responded, “Mr. Chairman, you know, that would be a decision that the doctor — the physician — and the woman would make.”
Gilbert then asked Tran, “I understand that. I’m asking if your bill allows that.”
To which Tran responded, “My bill would allow that, yes.”
Today, on WTOP’s Ask the Governor program, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, was asked about Tran’s bill. He strongly defended the bill, even if it led to killing a baby after the baby was born. “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. 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 the mother.”
In other words, the baby could be delivered alive, then killed — if that is what the mother desired.
Governor Northam said, “When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physician — more than one physician, by the way — and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities.”
“There may be a fetus that’s non-viable.”
For years, the pro-abortion movement has used the Latin word fetus, rather than unborn child or infant, in an obvious effort to obscure the humanity of the baby in the mother’s womb as a way to justify abortion. Now, Governor Northam is using the term fetus to refer to a baby who has actually been delivered.
The pro-life movement, while focusing much of its attention to fighting the pro-abortion cause, has long warned that acceptance of killing unborn children is laying the groundwork for legalized killing of others in society deemed inconvenient, such as deformed infants, older Americans, and the severely handicapped. In National Socialist Germany, such people were referred to as “useless eaters.”
Since 1973, the pro-life movement’s goal has been to get enough justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the twin decisions of January 22, 1973, that declared a mother had a constitutional right to abort her unborn child. If these rulings were reversed, the conventional thinking has been that the decision on the legal status of abortion would then return to the states, where it had rested for the first two centuries of American history.
After a majority of the New York legislature favored abortion-on-demand, and the failed late-term abortion bill in Virginia, pro-lifers are confronted with the stark reality that some states would continue to support abortion rights.
Roe v. Wade may very well be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. It certainly should be, but even if it were, and the issue of abortion returned to the states, it should be recognized that many states may very well decide that abortion for the unborn — and even infanticide for the delivered babies — should continue.
