If you've watched the news, read a news article, or gone on social media in the past week, you know that the abortion debate is more outspoken than ever because of New York's passing of a new bill allowing a woman to get an abortion in her late-term pregnancy. However, this isn't where the bill stops.
A lot of anti-abortion, pro-life politicians and news outlets are stopping there in their headlines. They say that New York's new abortion bill is an absolute monstrosity because it allows women to murder their fully developed babies no matter what.
This is false.
Abortion was already legal in New York. The addition to the bill is that women can abort late-term pregnancies if there are detrimental health risks to the mother herself. Pro-life journalism leaves this very, very important part out, which is entirely unfair.
Legally, New York's new bill falls entirely within the legal grounds of Roe v Wade. They didn't sign some bill into law that revolutionized abortion or made something legal for the first time in history. It's all in Roe v Wade already.
Beyond emphasizing that the late-term abortions are only available to mothers who are at risk of health problems due to the pregnancy or giving birth, the bill also shifts New York's abortion law from its penal code to its health code. This means that doctors and other medical officials cannot be prosecuted for performing the procedure.
The law now also states that physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and midwives can all perform nonsurgical abortion care.
So, before you see all of the "New York abortion law allows for barbaric butchering of the innocent" articles and angrily scroll by without even reading the article and deciding that you're pro-life and that New York's governor is evil, think about all of the women that this new bill can help.
Instead of a woman dying in childbirth, a husband losing his wife, a child being parentless or left behind, a woman is given the right to keep her life in her own hands. To start over. She is given the choice to have a child in a safe way that won't put her life in danger. We must think about the at-risk people who are already alive before we think about the fetuses that would suffer from genetic disorders or without their mothers.
No one is forcing anyone to get an abortion. The law was passed for the right of choice. Every woman should, without a doubt, have the right to decide what is best for herself and her body. A choice isn't a guaranteed abortion. It's much more than that. It's humane, it's equality, it's what's right.
