New York’s Reproach
Although I have lived most of my life in the great state of Michigan, I am by birth a native of the Empire State, New York. I was born in a small town at the foot of the Adirondack Mountains, three hours north of New York City. (A town, by the way, that was also the birth place of Abner Doubleday, the inventor of the American pastime, baseball.)
Last week the governor of New York signed into law a bill passed by the state legislature that is an affront to God and an attack on humanity. For this reason, I am now ashamed to be a New Yorker.
The “Reproductive Health Act” makes abortion legal in New York up to the point of birth. It removes unborn children from the legal definition of homicide. Now if someone assaults a pregnant woman and her child dies as a result, the perpetrator cannot be charged with homicide. It also removes any protection for babies who somehow survive an abortion. The “medical practitioners” can leave the baby to die or actually kill the child without legal consequences. Some are actually employing the term “post-birth abortion” to describe the coup de grace an abortion practitioner can now deliver to a living infant.
The Orwellian new speak employed by the media to describe this issue is misleading and insulting. “Pro-choice,” “reproductive health,” “post-birth abortion.” These are simply euphemisms for killing children – in the womb or immediately after delivery.
Someone interviewed former pediatrician and now governor of Virginia Ralph Northam on a radio program about a similar bill that would lift restrictions on abortion in his state. He said late term abortions are done with “the consent of obviously the mother, with consent of the physician, multiple physicians by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities or there may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example 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.”
So if the mother doesn’t desire, let the child die? What, pray tell, would the ensuing discussion be about? Should we terminate the child or let it live? Northam has since protested vehemently that his words are being misconstrued. However, he has yet to offer clarifications to the contrary.
Third trimester abortions are not as rare as some argue. 15,000 were performed last year in the U.S.! Defenders of this practice insist this is only when the fetus is non-viable or severely deformed. However, studies show this is not true. The truth is – and numerous physicians have testified to the fact – the only reason for late term abortion is to produce a dead baby rather than a living one. This business about the mother’s mental and physical health is all deception. What about killing a child who survives abortion? Once, we called this infanticide, or more clearly, murder.
Why this sudden rush to legislate abortion rights? Simple. Many fear that the makeup of the Supreme Court will change, and the Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973 legalizing abortion will be overturned. Now in New York, abortion will be legal regardless of what the Supreme Court decides.
Two years ago my brother and I toured New York City. Being a fire service chaplain, I made certain to include a visit to the 9/11 memorial. Inscribed on the memorial are the names of the 2,606 people who died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Eleven times the inscribed name of a woman is followed by, “and her unborn child.”
In a display of depraved irony, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the lights atop the new World Trade Center looking down on this memorial illuminated pink to celebrate the passage of New York’s new law guaranteeing the right to kill unborn children.
This New Yorker is ashamed. “Sin is a reproach to any people.”
David A. Oliver (B.A., M.A., D.Pas.Th) has been the pastor of Ashley Baptist Church in Belding, MI since 1994. He currently serves as president of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Fellowship of Michigan, and is also president of Proclaiming the Truth, Inc. (Neighborhood Bible Time). He also serves as chaplain for two west Michigan fire departments. He and his wife Penny have been married since 1987, and have three children and two grandchildren.
Thank you for your provocative perspective. As you pointed out, this is beyond New York itself (e.g. Virginia’s current governor and there is the senators who voted down yesterday’s bill in the U.S. Senate). Yet, the indictment of NY itself seems valid since the current leadership is what started this “sudden” push, and that leadershio has avowed that it wants N.Y. to be at the cutting edge again in this area. Very sad.