In the early part of 2018, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that nearly $5 million in funding to the New York State Companion Animal Capital Fund would invest in "critical improvements projects at New York shelters."  Cuomo's abortion activist lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, had this to say about the effort to make rescue animals more comfortable: "The test of whether a society is civilized and just is how it cares for its most vulnerable."

In a study, entitled "Who seeks abortion at or after 20 weeks?," published by the Guttmacher Foundation's journal, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, authors Foster and Kimport cite data that indicates that "fetal anomaly [and] life endangerment" are not the reasons women have late-term abortions.  Even still, one year after preaching about civilized society caring for its most vulnerable, Kathy Hochul smiled as Andrew Cuomo signed an abortion bill that allows babies to be aborted at nine months, by non-physicians, for any reason, and denies victims who survive the initial procedure the right to warmth, hydration, and oxygen.

At the happy event, the governor who grants sanctuary to MS-13, and bans the use of elephants for entertainment, seemed proud to amend New York State's public health law and deny those unlucky enough to be conceived in the state of New York both sanctuary and medical assistance.  In keeping with Barack Obama, who once said caring for a child born alive in a botched abortion undermines the "original intent" to produce a dead baby, Cuomo's law repealed section 4164 of New York's Public Health Law, which mandated medical care for any child born alive during an abortion.

New York's governor was so enthusiastic about contributing to the nation's 3,000 abortions a day that he celebrated by lighting up the spot where, on September 11, 2001, 3,000 Americans experienced agony similar to what an unborn child experiences while being burned, crushed, and dismembered alive in the womb.

Governor Cuomo transformed the site of mass murder in 2001 into a monument honoring mass murder in 2019.  The only thing missing from the festivities was a tablescape designed by Cuomo's live-in girlfriend, Sandra Lee, to mark the event.

Just last year, the man who joyfully facilitated subjecting unborn babies to extreme pain and then celebrated doing so with raucous applause followed by a light show announced legislation to ensure "pets ... be treated in a safe, responsible and humane manner," because "four-legged friends... are family members" in need of protection.

New York's Agriculture and Markets Law, §§ 359, 362, which Governor Cuomo enforces, states that it is illegal to "torture, overwork, beat or fail to provide necessary food or drink to an animal."  It is also illegal in New York to "carry an animal in a vehicle or vessel in a cruel way, or purposely leave objects that could injure animals (like glass, nails, or pieces of metal) in the street.

To protect animals other than humans from cruelty, Agriculture and Markets Law §353-a requires "New York make it a felony to kill or seriously injure a pet ... on purpose and in a particularly sadistic manner, or with the intention of causing extreme pain."  That means that animals are shielded from torture and extreme pain, while instating the Reproductive Health Act grants New York women the right to kill and "seriously injure" an unborn child in a "particularly sadistic manner."

Eighteenth-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued on behalf of legal protection for animals this way: "[t]he question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

In the state of New York, every year, thousands of non-sentient, non-verbal victims of abortion suffer through treatment legislators protect animals from experiencing, such as scorching; mutilation; and, in one scenario, jabbing through a beating heart with a needle containing a fatal dose of potassium chloride. 

In another scenario, thanks to Andrew Cuomo, while protecting baby chicks and rabbits from harm, defenseless children, destined for abortion but unfortunate enough to survive the first and second trimesters, can look forward to legally suffering through having their craniums crushed for easy removal from their mothers' wombs. 

Try smashing in the skull of a dog or a cat in New York State, and Andrew Cuomo, Defender of Animals, will have the perpetrator hunted down, prosecuted, and convicted in a court of law.

It was Charles Darwin who once said: "The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."

In an article entitled "Ensuring a stillborn: the ethics of fetal lethal injection in late abortion," feminist and University of Kentucky philosophy professor Joan C. Callahan disagreed with Darwin's premise.  In her reproductive ethics article, the author contended that abortion at any stage could be "defended because human fetuses are not persons and because religious commitments cannot be enforced in a pluralistic society."

Andrew Cuomo must agree with Callahan's extreme sentiment because his amended law now gives animal rights precedence over the rights of human beings.   To embrace the humanistic view that "human fetuses are not persons," Cuomo must dismiss his nominal commitment to pro-life Catholicism and downgrade those made in God's image and likeness to a status lower than the non-human "living creatures" Darwin encouraged all evolved species to love.

At the end of day, progressive Andrew Cuomo began his third term as New York's governor with the words "We will make history, and New York will move forward, not by building a wall ... but by building new bridges."  On Election Day, little did New Yorkers know that besides safeguarding the lives of potential patrons of pet cemeteries, the "new bridges" Cuomo planned to build would cross rivers of innocent blood into graveyards full of dead babies.

Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.

Image: Pat Arnow via Flickr.