AT LEAST THEY'RE FINALLY FOLLOWING THEIR HEARTS:

[S]chumer decided to tap into his party's dark id. The legislation he coughed up wouldn't just codify Roe into federal law. It would go much further, permitting abortions at any point during a pregnancy right up until birth. It would have wiped out state laws that prohibit abortions even after Roe's "viability" threshold. The only requirement for a grisly late-term abortion would be that "in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient's life or health."

It's "health" that clangs so loudly there. Such an elastic term could be read to cover just about anything, including mental health, a feeling of regret or the weariness that accompanies any pregnancy. The message is clear: find a creative enough doctor and a late-term abortion is yours.

Schumer's bill is thus light years past Bill Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare," and even further gone from the pro-life noises that Democrats like Joe Biden and Jesse Jackson once made. And even then Schumer wasn't finished. His bill would also demolish state-level parental notification laws, which polls find are overwhelmingly popular. It would even wipe out so-called conscience protections, which allow doctors to abstain from performing abortions if they have a moral objection.

When it comes to abortion, the most extreme of the first-world nations is Canada, which has no federal prohibitions whatsoever. Yet at least Up North conscience rights are generally accepted and the provinces have some regulatory latitude. Schumer's bill would take the United States beyond even that. The new frontier of virtually unlimited abortion would be more in line with China than anything in the West.

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