Let’s be clear: The RHA is not a simple codification of Roe v. Wade, as advocates claim. Rather, the legislation has components that should be disturbing to pro-choice and pro-life individuals alike. Currently, the state’s penal code defines “justifiable abortion acts” as being performed with a woman’s consent by a licensed physician within 24 weeks of pregnancy, or when the act is necessary to preserve her life. The proposed legislation would repeal this definition and effectively decriminalizes all abortion—at any time of pregnancy, for any reason.
—Caroline Bennett—
This is not progress. To celebrate it as progress, to light up public buildings in pink, signals…our decline. It signifies that we value ourselves more than others. [Yes, w]e value convenience. We value comfort. We value the here-and-now and what it can give to us. We want pleasure without consequences. We want decisions without responsibility. We want permission to break the laws of nature because they interfere with our desires.
—third-year law student Sarah Telle—
You can access all the article in this series of posts here.
Key point: New York’s new abortion law, the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), invites God’s wrath on New York and on America. It is not as though we weren’t inviting God’s wrath by disregarding human life already, but the RHA represents a new low in glorifying abortion, the government sanctioned practice ruthlessly killing our unborn children.
Democrats in the New York Legislature, along with Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, used this past Tuesday, the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, to enact an expansive new abortion law statewide. It is called the Reproductive Health Act (RHA). Before the vote took place in the New York Senate, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins expressed her joy over the near certainty that the proposed bill would become law:
We have a president who’s made it very, very clear that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. Today, here in New York, we are saying no […] and we’re not just saying no. We’re saying that here in New York, women’s health matters. We’re saying here in New York, women’s lives matter. We’re saying here in New York, women’s decisions matter.
Following the 38-24 vote, the Senate chamber erupted in applause. Here, in this chamber in recent years, a Republican majority had thwarted attempts to pass the legislation. With the 2018 elections, however, Democrats gained control of the chamber and vowed to make passage a top priority.
The vote in the New York Assembly was 92-47, and Governor Cuomo signed the legislation the very same day. Early in the legislative session, Democrats also made it a priority to ban therapy for minors seeking help to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction. That bill was signed into law by the governor on January 25. One is prompted to wonder if the Democrats care at all about the economy, jobs, and other issues that concern their constituents on a day-to-day basis.
Just what does the Reproductive Health Act do?
The Reproductive Health Act states, “Every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse contraception or sterilization.” It continues, “Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion….”
The New York State Right to Life Committee warns that elevating abortion to the level of a “fundamental right” will have ominous implications for pro-life individuals wanting to speak out against the practice. We are naïve not to realize that from such a “fundamental right” easily could flow other rights, such as
- the “right” of a woman not to hear a viewpoint that would encourage her to choose life for her baby,
- a “right” to abortion from any and all medical professionals, even if those professionals find abortion morally objectionable (thus, coercion of pro-life doctors and others), and
- the “right” of society as a whole to hinder pro-life speech and efforts to rescue women and children from abortion.
Life Site News reporter Calvin Freiburger summarizes some of the law’s other provisions (numbers have been added). The RHA
- “erases the state’s recognition of preborn babies older than 24 weeks as potential homicide victims,
- “removes abortion from the penal code entirely, and
- “allows licensed health practitioners other than full doctors to commit abortions.”
With regard to the first point, the law states, “‘Person,’ When referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.” Really? One has to be born? What about an unborn child at 39½ weeks? What about a baby who has been aborted and is alive? He or she is not a person in New York’s eyes.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update from the Family Research Council emphasizes this point. The RHA counts an individual as a person “[n]ot a second before [birth], and maybe—without infant protections—not few seconds after either.”
The article continues, warning about another provision in the law, one we cited above in item number 3.
Midwives and nurse practitioners can also perform abortions under the law, meaning that this law doesn’t just put unborn lives on the line—but women’s as well. Welcome back to the dark age of unregulated horror houses with rusty equipment and untrained staff who botch abortions and kill mothers. Progress, indeed.
The Mother’s “Health”
Also significantly, the RHA states that an abortion may occur to protect the life or health of the mother. Beware! The term “health” as used in this law is interpreted extremely broadly; in fact, broadly enough to give a green light for an abortion if the mother merely feels a little bit frustrated or stressed out about the prospect of delivering her baby.
Thus, the new law permits abortion through all nine nine months of pregnancy for any reason or no reason. And this is celebrated? Sadly, yes, it is. The euphoria seen on the part of RHA’s supporters prompted the satirical online news site Babylon Bee to publish an article titled “Ultrasound Unable To Detect Heartbeat in New York State Legislators.” So much for the mantra we heard from the left for so many years—Abortion must be kept safe, legal, and rare!
God Will Judge
In this post and the next, I want to briefly summarize nine reasons why God will hold New York and America accountable for this expansion of abortion “rights,” or, more accurately expressed, the right to kill innocent babies who are mere moments away from birth. We already were inviting God’s wrath on this country through abortion, but we now have hit a new low. We’ll highlight three reasons here, then next time, we’ll briefly examine an additional six.
First, the RHA authorizes the slaughter of innocent children within the borders of a state where convicted murders are shielded from capital punishment. Blogger Matt Walsh noted the stark irony. Just
in case you haven’t yet grasped how twisted this law is, consider that capital punishment has been ruled unconstitutional in New York. You are not allowed to give a lethal injection to convicted serial killers, pedophiles, rapists, school shooters, or any other species of monster. But you can give a lethal injection to an infant. Indeed, you can only give lethal injections to infants in New York. The crime of child rape will not earn you the needle. The crime of being conceived in the wrong womb might. It is a capital offense, and you may well be made to suffer dearly for it.
Recalling the sins of Israel’s forebears, the inspired writer of Psalm 106 declared,
35 But they mingled with the Gentiles
And learned their works;
36 They served their idols,
Which became a snare to them.
37 They even sacrificed their sons
And their daughters to demons,
38 And shed innocent blood,
The blood of their sons and daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with blood.
39 Thus they were defiled by their own works,
And played the harlot by their own deeds.
40 Therefore the wrath of the LORD was kindled against His people,
So that He abhorred His own inheritance.
41 And He gave them into the hand of the Gentiles,
And those who hated them ruled over them.
42 Their enemies also oppressed them,
And they were brought into subjection under their hand (Ps. 106:35-42; context, Ps. 106).
Aren’t the parallels1 between ancient Israel and 21st-century America stunning? Read again from verses 40 and 41 that “[t]herefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people.…And He gave them into the hand of the Gentiles, And those who hated them ruled over them.”
If God did not spare His own people when responding to their disobedience, He won’t spare America, either.
Second, the RHA is built upon and rooted in a racist and even genocidal movement—and it shows. Seventy-eight percent of the abortions occurring in New York City are performed on black and hispanic children. Sadly, there are more “black babies being killed through abortion than being born in the city. Cuomo’s new abortion law will likely increase those numbers.” Is there really any question?
Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen recently tweeted, “Our core mission is providing, protecting, and expanding access to abortion and reproductive healthcare. We will never back down from that fight….”
All of this surely would be a dream-come-true for Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), founder of Planned Parenthood. Not coincidentally, “79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located” in or near minority communities.
Consider each of the following quotes from Ms. Sanger.
- “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
- “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan…I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses…I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.”
- “Birth control is nothing more or less than…weeding out the unfit.”
- “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world.”
Finally, consider this attack on immigrants and the poor—and philanthropic efforts to assist them.
- “They are…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ’spawning… human beings who never should have been born. Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks [of people] that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”
Thus, on the one hand, Democrats claim to be champions of minorities and the poor; yet on the other, they embrace efforts and pass laws to eliminate future generations of blacks and other minorities. The truth is that they are obsessed with power, and they are exploiting blacks, minorities, and illegal immigrants to retain, regain, and increase it.
Third, God will judge New York and America for this new law because we know intuitively that unborn babies are human beings, and they are human beings of infinite worth.
Not far from One World Trade Center, which Governor Cuomo ordered to be lit in pink in celebration of the RHA’s passage, is the 9/11 Memorial. The memorial bears the names of those who died in the militant Islamist terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Ten of those entries represent twenty individuals. They are
Deanna Lynn Galante and her unborn child
Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas and her unborn child
Jennifer L. Howley and her unborn child
Helen Crossin Kittle and her unborn child
Vanessa Lang and her unborn child
Patricia Ann Cimaroli Massari and her unborn child
Renee A. May and her unborn child
Sylvia San Pio Resta and her unborn child
Rahma Salie and her unborn child
Dianne Singer and her unborn child
Also recognized at the memorial are Monica Rodriguez Smith and her unborn child, both of whom perished in February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
When these women died, their loved ones’ grief surely was compounded because their babies also were lost. In an article appearing at www.newsday.com, Emily Ngo writes,
Acknowledging the unborn underscores how deeply the attacks devastated families and their futures, said 9/11 memorial president Joe Daniels.
“It’s a special part of the memorial,” he said. “It reinforces that message about the whole project that the folks were just like us, that they were about to start these lives. . . . It reminds us that they were who we are.”
Thus, point number 3 is multi-layered. We know intuitively that
- the unborn are human,
- they are of infinite worth, and that
- government’s job is to protect and preserve innocent human life, not destroy it.
As Thomas
Jefferson declared, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
Supporters of the Reproductive Health Act, as well as those who are content to let it pass and take effect without objecting so they can focus on other things, are promoting bad government, even tyrannical government.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
—Thomas Jefferson—
God notices, and He will judge us if we do not repent and work tirelessly against this. While the Lord is patient and merciful, His patience and mercy are not limitless in the face of raw, relentless depravity.
Next time, we’ll consider additional reasons why, apart from our repenting of this evil, God’s judgment is certain.
Meanwhile, pray for New York, and pray for America.
Part 2 is available here.
Copyright © 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Note:
photo credit: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Be First to Comment