A New York man accused of stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death, killing both her and her unborn child, will face one less charge thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The state’s new ultrapermissive abortion law allows for pregnancies to be terminated right up to the moment of birth, and so the charge of abortion has been dropped against Anthony Hobson, 48.
It was only a matter of time before the zeal of pro-abortion lawmakers would provide aid and comfort to those who allegedly murder pregnant women outside of clinical settings. I just didn’t think we’d get here this soon.
On Feb. 3, five-month-pregnant Jennifer Irigoyen, 35, was dragged into a stairwell in her Queens apartment building where she was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and torso, according to New York law enforcement officials.
Irigoyen and her unborn child were rushed to a nearby hospital, where they were soon pronounced dead. Hobson, who was arrested this weekend, has been charged with “second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon,” according to Queens Chronicle. Officials planned initially to bring a felony abortion charge against Hobson, but scrapped that idea over legal concerns for New York’s Reproductive Health Act.
The state’s new pro-abortion legislation removed all mentions of “abortion” from Article 125 of the Penal Law. The portions of the state criminal code that had previously mentioned abortion have all been moved into public health law.
Cuomo’s Reproductive Health Act also repealed large portions of the state’s penal code, including where it recognized “abortion in the second degree” as a class E felony, “abortion in the first degree” as a class D felony, and “self-abortion in the second degree” as a class B misdemeanor.
The language of the law regarding homicide has also been amended. It used to read:
It now reads:
Even the title of Article 125 of New York’s penal law has been renamed from “Homicide, Abortion, and Related Offences” to just “Homicide and Related Offenses.”
Hobson’s abortion charge “was repealed by the Legislature, and this is the law as it exists today,” a spokeswoman for the district attorney told the New York Post.
This is exactly what the New York State Catholic Conference warned against when the bill was being debated in the state legislature. Back then, the conference warned that the ultra-permissive law “removes accountability for those who would harm unborn children outside the context of medical termination of pregnancy.”
It was just a matter of time before we got to this place. Pro-choice lawmakers have struggled for years to reconcile their support for abortion with no limits with laws that recognize the murder of a pregnant woman as a multiple-felony event. With the passage of New York’s Reproductive Health Act, it looks like their answer to the riddle is merely to ignore that a child was also murdered.
