Fortunately, and at least for the moment, the Virginia bill which would have codified infanticide at the moment of birth has been defeated. Remember, these are the same types of people who got all squishy over treating stone cold Islamic terrorists meanly. Babies, though? The Democrats are just showing their true stripes on the issue. And along comes Michelle Goldberg in the NY Times, which has this as the featured opinion piece on the web front page
Fake News About Abortion in Virginia
Under current law in Virginia, third-trimester abortions are permitted when a woman’s physician and two other doctors certify that continuing a pregnancy would result in a mother’s death, or “substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.†This week Kathy Tran, a Democrat in Virginia’s House of Delegates, testified in favor of a bill that would end the requirement for two extra doctors to sign off on such abortions, and strike the words “substantially and irremediably†from the existing law. Similar legislation has been introduced in past years. Despite what you might have heard, at no point did Tran try to legalize infanticide.
When Tran appeared before a statehouse subcommittee, the Republican majority leader, Todd Gilbert, presented her with an outré hypothetical. Could a woman about to go into labor request an abortion if her doctor certified that she needed one for mental health reasons? Tran said that the decision would be between a woman and her doctor, but, evidently taken aback by the question, eventually allowed that it would be permitted under her bill.
Tran handled the moment poorly. She might have pointed out that legislation is not generally written with an eye to prohibiting ridiculous and unprecedented scenarios. It is inconceivable that a doctor would certify a need for an abortion while a woman is in labor; some doctors won’t even let a woman turn down a C-section if they think a baby’s health is at risk. But Tran’s impolitic answer to a ludicrous question gave abortion opponents grist for an explosion of self-righteous outrage.
Oh, she just “handled it poorly”, which is LibSpeak for “she told the truth.” The vast majority of late term abortions are not to protect the mother: they are elective. Exactly what was the need to change the existing law on late term abortions if not to make it that much easier?
Michelle continues on for a bit, attempting to circle the wagons, ending with
Having extra doctors sign off on each late abortion safeguards against (mythical) cavalier terminations, but it means that women in anguished, urgent situations need to jump through extra hoops. Abortion opponents treat mental health exemptions as easily exploited loopholes, but one instance in which they’re invoked is when a woman learns that her fetus has little chance of surviving outside the womb, and can’t face the prospect of going through labor only to watch her baby die.
In other words, let the child die while it’s lying on a table.
