‘A woman’s life or death may be on the line and, you know, one doctor is as good as three…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Long known for maintaining friendly ties with the Chinese government, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe tiptoed nearer to endorsing the U.S.’s own variation of a “one child” policy with a recent flip–flop on partial-birth abortions.
McAuliffe—a possible 2020 presidential aspirant closely aligned with the Clinton family—backpedaled recently on comments he made in January that repudiated the practice of infanticide, according to PolitiFact, which ruled his statements a “Full Flop.”
After a controversial bill, proposed by state Sen. Kathy Tran of Fairfax, was defeated by the state’s Republican-led General Assembly, McAuliffe’s successor, current Gov. Ralph Northam, defended the effort—and then some.
The proposed bill would have allowed a single doctor to approve a late-term abortion in the third trimester if the pregnancy was deemed detrimental to a mother’s health. The current standard requires that three physicians must determine “substantial and irremediable” harm to the mother.
Tran had acknowledged during discussion of the bill that it would apply to babies even as they were crowning.
In his defense—shortly before an even bigger scandal involving evidence of racism on his medical school yearbook page—Northam went even farther, implying that there would be justification for “aborting” an infant even after birth at the mother’s wishes.
McAuliffe then said on CNN’s “State of the Union” he thought Northam had misspoken.
“No Democrat I know is for infanticide, none, none,” he said. “I just don’t know of anyone who is for it.”
But after being pressed on the issue in an April 1 interview with a Portsmouth radio show, McAuliffe finally admitted that he, too, would have supported the bill.
Naturally, McAuliffe—a native of New York, which recently passed its own partial-birth law—tried to qualify his support by saying he was championing the rural women of the Old Dominion in places where only one doctor would be available.
“A woman’s life or death may be on the line and, you know, one doctor is as good as three,” said McAuliffe, conceding he had not read the actual bill. “Why do you need three if you’ve got a qualified doctor?”
PolitiFact said a request to McAuliffe’s spokesperson, Crystal Carson, for clarity did little to help. Rather, Carson attempted to deflect and blame Republicans for playing semantic games.
“The only people talking about ‘infanticide’ are anti-choice, anti-women Republicans,” Carson told PolitiFact in an email. “Of course Governor McAuliffe is against ‘infanticide’—any reasonable person would be.”
Carson added that the issue raised in the bill had “nothing to do with that—but instead reduces invasive, medically-unnecessary requirements put on women across the Commonwealth and enables them to make their own health care decisions in consultation with their doctors.”
The recent passage of the New York law invited comparisons with Chinese policies, both from its pro-life opponents and from Chinese immigrants who came to America seeking escape from a culture of forced abortions and other atrocities.
But for McAuliffe, a firm pro-Chinese stance, including his pledge to be a “brick wall” on pro-abortion issues, may help ingratiate him to a key source for funding his campaign.
McAuliffe was implicated as a key player in a Clinton-era scandal to swap nuclear secrets for campaign donations from Chinese donors, which the Independent Sentinel called the “most serious scandal in U.S. history.”
The former bundler and DNC chair also rented out the Lincoln bedroom in the White House to the Chinese and other wealthy donors.
During the Obama era McAuliffe—who also served on the board of the Clinton Foundation—went into business with Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, on a failed business to market green automobiles, but their enterprise was later investigated as a front for providing Chinese donors with permanent residency visas.