Abortion Comes Home To Connecticut

Susan Bysiewicz 

There is little doubt that Democrats this election year will be sounding the Abortion Gong in nearly every competitive political race.

Here is Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s sound-off, courtesy of CTMirror: “Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said Stefanowski is offering women no assurance he would veto any (emphasis mine) effort to restrict access to abortion in Connecticut, a state whose legislature passed a law 32 years ago codifying the tenets of Roe.

“’It’s one thing to support the current law. It’s another thing to step forward and say if a bill should come to your desk, that you will veto it, and you will fight any attempts to weaken our law, because those happen every year,’ Bysiewicz said. ‘So you’re not pro-choice, in my estimation, until you step up and say that.’”

Republican gubernatorial aspirant Bob Stefanowski supports current law, but Bysiewicz and Governor Ned Lamont believe that Stefanowski’s pledge does not go far enough.

Everyone – including pro-abortion extremists in the Democrat Party such as U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal – knows it is not possible for a governor of Connecticut to veto laws already passed. And everyone knows as well that governors, Republican or Democrat, are obliged as chief executive officers of the state, to execute laws that had been passed.

Lamont presides as governor in a state in which a single party commands 1) the governor’s office, 2) the General Assembly, 3) a less than independent State Supreme Court, 4) all state congressional offices, and 5) the U.S. Congressional Delegation. Given the power position of Democrats in a single party state, the fear that a Republican governor and Lieutenant Governor would be able to induce Democrats to alter laws favoring abortion on demand at any stage in a woman’s pregnancy is much overblown -- even though Roe v Wade provided that states could regulate abortion following the first trimester of pregnancy.

Democrat legislators, autocratically controlling Republican access in the General Assembly, are able, through sheer numbers, to block any and all legislation introduced by Republicans, and have done so since the first Governor Dannel Malloy administration.

Still, hypothetical questions launched during political campaigns should be met head-on. Whether or not a future governor is willing to pledge that he or she will offer women in the state “assurance he would veto any (emphasis mine) effort to restrict access to abortion in Connecticut” will, of course, depend on the specific nature of the proposed legislation.  By “any” in the above challenge, Bysiewicz means all attempts to regulate Big Abortion. Bysiewicz is in conformity with Blumenthal’s view that any and all restrictions on Big Abortion are a violation of a woman’s “right to choose.”

But, since Bysiewicz seems now willing to allow hypotheticals to leech into gubernatorial campaigns, let us suppose some Democrat legislator with a wounded conscience should introduce a bill mandating parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor. Producing an abortable fetus – one that has not yet quickened -- in a girl younger than 16 years of age is considered statutory rape under prevailing Connecticut laws. In this particular case, there would be two victims, the aborted fetus and the raped girl.

Even a frozen hearted politician who favored abortion rights for women at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason would likely pause before rejecting a bill that would leave a girl, raped statutorily, in the hands of a man who persuaded the underage girl to get an abortion because public disclosure might inconvenience him. Very likely a majority of women in Connecticut, including mothers and doting dads, would not object to a bill that mandates abortion providers to report such cases to police, who are usually interested in apprehending for prosecution statutory rapists?

Even someone who claims to be “pro-choice” may want to impede statutory rapists who, under Connecticut law, are not pro-choice, and this can best be done when abortion providers are required to refuse their services to underage girls whose parent or parents have not been notified that their child will undergo a serious medical procedure.

In a 2011 column, “Abortions for minors can't be faced honestly,” then Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell noted, “… in a sensational case four years ago… a 15-year-old girl who had been missing from Bloomfield for almost a year was discovered to have been living with a 41-year-old man in West Hartford and to have obtained an abortion at a Connecticut clinic as a result of her statutory rape by him, only to be returned to his custody as a sex slave because no one involved with the abortion asked any questions.”

Hypotheses are two edge swords. If it is permissible for Bysiewicz to demand that Stefanowski should veto any (emphasis mine) effort to restrict access to abortion in Connecticut, why is it not permissible for Stefanowski to demand that the Democrat majority in the General Assembly admit a bill, offered by either a Democrat or Republican, mandating that abortion providers refuse abortions to minors without parental permission?

Hypothetically, all’s fair in love and politics. But it should not escape notice that if Bysiewicz nods assent to Stefanowski’s challenge, she cannot do so without repudiating her own challenge to Stefanowski – that he should veto “any (emphasis mine) effort to restrict access to abortion in Connecticut.”