Facts matter

FactCheck.org has a page on the New York abortion law, the Reproductive Health Act, Addressing New York’s New Abortion Law. The pro-life movement has claimed the law makes infanticide legal. That isn't true.

[...] Justin Flagg, a spokesman for New York State Sen. Liz Krueger, who sponsored the new law, said that “the requirement that a second physician be present … did not reflect medical realities of abortion later in pregnancy nor modern standards of medical care, and was legally redundant and unnecessary.”

“Modern abortion techniques do not result in live birth; however, in the great unlikelihood that a baby was born alive, the medical provider and team of medical support staff would provide all necessary medical care, as they would in the case of any live birth,” he wrote in an email. “The RHA does not change standard medical practices. To reiterate, any baby born alive in New York State would be treated like any other live birth, and given appropriate medical care. This was the case before the RHA, and it remains the case now.”

New York defines a live birth as “the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached; each product of such a birth is considered live born.” ...

The same is true of the proposed Virginia bill. From New York Magazine - Here Are the Facts Behind an Abortion Controversy Engulfing Virginia Democrats