Under the new law, she can obtain an abortion after 24 weeks if being pregnant is somehow harming her health, a criterion which is so elastic it can be stretched to cover almost anything.
As one commentator observed, an unborn child a few moments before its birth now has fewer rights in New York than do illegal immigrants.
Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire has a column in which he "argues" that the New York law doesn't go far enough and that it should be expanded to permit post-birth abortions.
Walsh's column is a satire - an effective way to make a very serious point: Any of the reasons used to justify giving women an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy are just as valid as reasons for allowing a woman to "terminate" the life of an already born child.
Three justifications for abortion on demand commonly heard from the lips of pro-choice advocates are:
- The woman’s autonomy must be respected.
- The fetus is dependent on his mother and thus not a person.
- If the fetus is not aborted, it will just become an unwanted child, and we already have enough of those to deal with.
[A]s I thought more deeply about the issue, I began to see that this law is not quite the victory for freedom and autonomy that I first imagined. It is a good start, but there is much more work to be done. The law allows for a fetus to be terminated at any stage so long as the procedure is needed to protect the life or health of the mother.Read the rest at the link. It'd be funny if the subject matter weren't so grim. If you're pro-life you'll nod in agreement the whole way through. If you're pro-choice it'll make you grind your teeth, but then teeth-grinding is a poor rebuttal.
This qualification is in itself problematic because it puts someone else — likely a man — in the position of judging whether a woman’s reason for procuring an abortion is “acceptable.” No person other than the woman herself can make such a determination.
Perhaps this is a minor problem. Indeed, “health” can mean anything whatsoever. Emotional health, physical health, psychological health, financial health, spiritual health. An abortion is always a matter of preserving health in some form. The authors of the bill obviously wrote it intending that the “restrictions” would restrict no one. It is an admirable effort, yet there is something else to consider.
If a woman decides to end her pregnancy in the third trimester, she is still (sadly) going to have to deal with labor and delivery. The fetus is treated with a fatal dose of medication administered by an injection into its skull and then, after a few days, the woman gives birth to the now terminated fetus. But how is it in the best interest of the woman to administer this dose to the fetus while it is still inside her?
Isn’t it a further infringement on her autonomy that she be forced to go through such a procedure? And doesn’t it needlessly put her at risk? Wouldn’t it be more consistent with the pro-choice ethic to evacuate the fetus and then administer the treatment? How do we help and respect the woman by arbitrarily subjecting her to such a physically and emotionally taxing process?
It will be objected that a fetus prior to birth is inside the woman while the fetus after birth is outside. Yes, and so? We have already established that the fetus has no rights of its own. Only the mother’s wellbeing matters here, and her wellbeing would be better served by a post-birth procedure.
What pro-choice advocates need to do is explain, if they can, why what Walsh says is wrong.
