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All I Really Need to Know about Andrew Cuomo…

Mar 6, 2013

By Dave Andrusko

Pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Twenty five years ago, Robert Fulghum told us in a gigantic bestseller, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Well, I would suggest everything you really need to know about the deviousness, insincerity, and claptrap surrounding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new mega-abortion proposal can be found in the first paragraph of this story from the Associated Press: “A new coalition lobbying for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s women’s rights agenda said it supports his decision to link popular measures against workplace discrimination and human trafficking with a hotly debated abortion measure.”

Get it? If you’re in favor of human trafficking you’ll oppose the Governor’s yet to be spelled out in detail expansion of abortion. These people are shameless.

Cuomo about took the roof off in a demagogic State of the State speech in early January in which he  called for passage of the Women’s Reproductive Health Act. As the AP put it, “Cuomo reached a crescendo in that speech when he promised to ‘Enact a Reproductive Health Act because it is her body, it is her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice.’”

I guess Cuomo believes if you repeat something enough, people will be impressed—and/or take you seriously. I know I took him at his word as did the usual cadre of pro-abortion politicians and interest groups.

Now, of course, every pro-lifer knew that Cuomo knew his “fiery” rhetoric would cause a backlash, and not just from pro-lifers. That’s why all of us knew he’d pretend to do what the AP reported him as doing last week: say “he didn’t support and wasn’t calling for passage of the Reproductive Health Act or any expansion of abortion rights. Instead, he said he simply wants to codify current abortion protections should the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal in 1973.”

National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote about Cuomo’s shuck and jive today in a piece titled, “The Campaign to Hide Abortion Expansion behind ‘Women’s Equality.’”

As single issue pro-lifers, we have no position on various additional components of the “Women’s Equality Agenda.” But Lopez’s initial point is that “The newly formed New York Women’s Equality Coalition made the case at a press conference that the agenda consists of more than abortion by insisting that the radical Reproductive Rights Act — which as it currently stands would expand abortion access in the state — remain a part of it.”

And understandably so, given that the coalition includes NOW and Planned Parenthood. The Reproductive Health Act is so absurd—as if New York is “suffering” from too-few abortions or inadequate access—that on its own it is unlikely to pass, as Lopez notes.

After we remember what we’ve talked about before, it’s easy to see why Cuomo is pretending that he will propose something less radical than the Reproductive Rights Act — inducements to make sure all late-term abortions are performed in New York, expansion of the ranks of non-physicians who will be allowed to perform abortions, a crushing of conscience rights, the commandeering of tax revenues, etc., etc., etc.

But does anyone think that Cuomo is going to trim his sails, having rocked the halls with his promise of utter faithfulness to the most radical pro-abortion agenda? Or that the stories that were floated—that Cuomo was using an extremist position on abortion to separate himself from the run-of-the-mill pro-abortionists who will participate in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries—was all just a “misunderstanding”? Or that he would willingly give up the intoxication of hearing the full-throated cheers that greeted “Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice” as he goes forward?

Hardly.

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Categories: Legislation