Today, Governor Roy Cooper (D) North Carolina follows the abysmal ideology of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) Virginia by exercising his Veto authority over ratified Senate Bill 359. In my view Gov. Cooper is leading our citizens down a dangerous path of institutional sanctioned infanticide. Senate Bill 359, recently ratified by the NC Legislature provided albeit simple but necessary protection for newly born infants surviving murder by the hands of attending physicians, after the new birth of such an infant. The Act may have been cited as the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.”

Governor Cooper, who I have personally known in his former role as our State’s Attorney General and having formerly served in his Administration, am appalled by his recent Veto of this important safeguard for our children’s right to be protected from institutionalized murder of newly born infants. This earth shaking shift in the moral acceptance of legalized abortion under the guise of a woman’s reproductive or health rights has taken this issue too far. In all fairness to the reader, I am unabashedly Pro-life from the moment of conception to natural death and a Republican.  However, I also understand that most moral citizens I know, regardless of their position on “a woman’s right to choose” still struggle with questions of abortions in the rare cases of rape or even incest.

This recent action taken by Governor Cooper takes us on a morally irreversible path leading to the tearing asunder the moral fabric of our society.  In Governor Cooper’s official statement, The Governor states:  “Laws already protect newborn babies and this bill is an unnecessary interference between doctors and their patients. This needless legislation would criminalize doctors and other healthcare providers for a practice that simply does not exist.”  Clearly, Governor Cooper has conflated the issue of women’s health and reproductive rights and what is clearly Infanticide by his own statement! Was it not Governor Northam (D) VA who said that the decision to render medical assistance to a newly born infant who survives abortion is a personal issue between the doctor and the mother? I certainly thought it would be Governor Cooper as a Democrat Governor, to be the first to stand up for the life, liberties, and rights of those in our society who could not protect themselves! Does one not think that a newly born little baby does not enjoin even the very basic civil liberties of which the Democrat Party and our Democratic Republic afford to even the least of us in our society?

I take no joy in being the one to raise my voice to our Governor. Nor do I take any pleasure in sharing that he has erred. I have learned in my life that at times things come up that are so egregious that even beyond a religious context rational morality and civil discourse demand that voices of righteousness be raised. Sadly, our Governor has erred in the following ways. And thusly, failed those who elected him to lead us.  1. Governor Cooper has heeded the voice of his political base, which is far outside the mainstream of the moral consciousness of North Carolinians. 2. The Governor has grossly under estimated the moral passion this issue provokes with a majority of citizens. 3. The Governor has morally failed his State by not protecting North Carolina’s children, the most vulnerable element of our society. Unfortunately, I fear that this is an irrevocable step to an immoral abyss. Which state will be the next to succumb to this type of wrong ideology and governance? What more can be done in North Carolina to protect us from a society that in the name of amorality, irreverence and Godlessness, kills its children? It is a sad day for North Carolina and this nation!

Francis D’Ambra

Manteo

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