Last updated on April 1st, 2022 at 09:47 am
California Governor Gavin Newsom fancies himself a future presidential candidate and is doing what he can to appeal to the radical “progressive” base of the Democrat party that plays such an outsized role in national Democrat politics. He apparently thinks that abortion is his golden ticket to the White House, especially in light of the likelihood that the US Supreme Court may overturn, or substantially pare back, it’s hotly-disputed creation of a “right” to abortion established in its decades-old Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey decisions.
Polls show that Democrats overwhelmingly support abortion as a constitutional right, so Newsom is moving to position California as a “sanctuary state” when it comes to promoting abortion. He’s formed a “California Future Of Abortion Council” to develop proposals to not only ensure the continued availability of abortion in California – for residents and nonresidents alike – but to vastly expand so-called reproductive rights to include abortion even after birth. In other words, infanticide.
Under legislation (Assembly Bill 2223) to implement one of Newsom’s abortion Council’s recommendations, “pregnant persons” (otherwise known as women) would be protected from criminal or civil penalties for any “actions or omissions” related to her pregnancy, “including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” Not only that, anyone who “aids or assists” a woman in exercising her “rights” under the legislation is absolved of any liability. Further, if a law enforcement officer or other authority were to arrest or charge someone with a crime related to an act protected by the legislation, the officer could be personally sued and damages awarded against the officer.
What is going on here? It’s one thing to protect a woman’s “right” to abortion, it’s another thing entirely to extend that “right” to a child that has already been born.
Whether AB 2223 authorizes infanticide hinges on the meaning of “perinatal death.” Tellingly, the legislation itself does not define the term so we are left to other definitional sources. While medical definitions vary, all of them include the death of newborns up to seven days after birth. Thus, it would seem clear that – absent a Court ruling to the contrary – under the provisions of AB 2223 a baby born alive could be killed for up to seven days, and perhaps longer.
Keep in mind that in California a woman has the right to abort her child for any reason, or no reason at all, through the entirety of her pregnancy as long as she claims doing so is necessary to protect her mental or physical health. AB 2223 would eliminate the “health exception” entirely and extend this expanded right to “terminate” children seven days old or maybe even older. So, a woman could give birth to a healthy baby but maybe there’s something about the child that bothers her. Perhaps its skin color is too dark, or too light. Or its eyes look slanted, or not slanted enough. Maybe the child cries too much. Or the baby is a girl and the woman wanted a boy, or vice versa. Perhaps the child is born with a condition that will require future medical care. Or maybe the woman is suffering from post-partum depression and no longer desires to be a mother. All of these circumstances, and any other reason (or no reason at all) would seem to give rise to legal protection for the woman – and anyone she selects to “aid or assist” – to kill the child and thus have it suffer a “perinatal death.”
I have a hard time believing that progressive Democrats are down with killing a defenseless newborn child because of a mindless commitment to a “woman’s right to choose.” As a Californian, I’ve followed Gavin Newsom’s career in public office for many years – from a local Supervisor to San Francisco Mayor to Lt. Governor and now as Governor. It’s my view that he won’t wear well on the national stage. The guy oozes arrogance, condescension and insincerity. He makes Kamala Harris with her incessant cackling and smirks look like Margaret Thatcher. But regardless of whether turning California into a sanctuary state for abortion is good politics or not for Newsom, there’s something far more important here about his Future of Abortion Council legislation, AB 2223.
It’s about whether we want to live in a civilized society any longer, a society where human beings are entitled to certain rights and protections under our national and state Constitutions and laws, or whether things like a newborn child’s right to life can be sacrificed to expediency, political or otherwise. I pray there is still some semblance of decency left among California’s Democrat elected officials and they defeat AB 2223.
May God have mercy on my state, and our nation.