Right to Life: NY Abortion Law Removes Criminal Penalties for Violence Against Unborn Child During Homicide

New York Right to Life warns the Reproductive Health Act signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo would remove criminal penalties for “acts of violence against a pregnant mother and her child.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an extreme pro-abortion bill into law Tuesday that defines a “person” as a “human being who has been born and is alive,” a description that eliminates recognition of “personhood” in the unborn.

New York State Right to Life Committee says that making abortion a “fundamental right” could lead to invalidating “any limits on abortion” and “mandat[ing] that everyone take part in the culture of death.”

“The bill would also prevent pregnant women whose babies are killed in violent attacks from seeing justice, and have the effect of ‘authorizing infanticide’ by repealing the requirement that a second physician be on hand in the event that an attempted abortion past 20 weeks yields a live infant.

According to the Democrat & Chronicle:

New York legalized abortion three years prior to the landmark Roe v. Wade case, but New York still kept abortion in its criminal code, making it a felony to perform late-term abortions.

The 1970 law defined homicide as “conduct which causes the death of a person or an unborn child with which a female has been pregnant for more than 24 weeks.”

The Reproductive Health Act strips abortions from the penal code and adds the following language:

The legislature finds that comprehensive reproductive health care is a fundamental component of every individual’s health, privacy and equality.

Therefore, it is the policy of the state that:

Every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse contraception or sterilization. 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, pursuant to this article.