A man who has been charged with the gruesome murder of his girlfriend and the baby she was carrying in her womb is being spared from charges related to the child’s killing as a result of New York’s new abortion expansion law.
According to witnesses and police, on February 3, Jennifer Irigoyen, a 35-year-old who was five months pregnant, pled with her boyfriend to spare her child as he dragged her out from her Queens apartment and stabbed her in the abdomen, torso, and neck. Irigoyen yelled “He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the baby!” according to one witness.
The building superintendent, who says she watched surveillance video of the incident, claims Hobson targeted Irigoyen’s stomach first. Another witness told reporters she heard loud arguing and then Irigoyen “yelling…about wanting to protect her baby.’’ The Queens district attorney’s office states that Hobson “repeatedly plunged a knife into the woman’s abdomen.”
Both Irigoyen and her baby are dead. Prosecutors have charged 48-year-old Anthony Hobson with Irigoyen’s murder. It has now been revealed that Hobson, who is being held without bail, will not be charged for the violent murder of the child as a result of New York’s new abortion law.
New Laws Prevent Charging Hobson Properly
In late January, the state legislature passed an updated abortion bill, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law. The falsely named Reproductive Health Act (RHA) removed abortion from the criminal penal code and placed it into the state’s public health law.
As first reported by The New York Post, the Queens district attorney’s office initially distributed a press release stating Hobson would be charged with second-degree abortion, but later rescinded that felonious charge of violating (the now-repealed) penal code 125.40.
A spokesperson for the DA’s office told the Post it would no longer be charging Hobson with second-degree abortion, as such a charge “was repealed by the Legislature, and this is the law as it exists today.” The DA’s office later explained more fully: “When the charges were originally filed, we were unaware that the Reproductive Health law was signed. Once we became aware, we informed the judge not to include the charge of abortion in his bail decision. At Hobson’s next court appearance, the Abortion charge will be formally dismissed.”
Hobson was ultimately arraigned on second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Any reasonable person, no matter on what side of the abortion debate he or she may be, should find considerable issue with the lack of criminal penalty directly related to Hobson’s actions against Irigoyen’s child. Regardless of if the additional charge would have added time to Hobson’s potential sentence, there should be a charge for such a crime. Anyone who cares about justice should find issue with this case.
Unborn Children and Mental Gymnastics
There is, however, difficulty in appealing to the most ardent abortion supporters, for a philosophical conundrum makes appeals to these individuals’ common sense and rationality difficult. In order to justify abortion, many abortion supporters reject the idea that the unborn child is a person. Therefore, the slippery slope begins in the case of the murder of Irigoyen’s child: If Irigoyen’s child is not a person, then Hobson cannot be charged with killing a person.
Earlier this month, Cuomo asked about opposition to the bill: “Why is the Catholic Church and extreme conservative Republicans upset?” The answers are many, but one is: Perhaps they are upset that a man who viciously stabbed to death a woman and her baby, the latter of whom seemed to be a primary target of the attacks, would not be charged with anything related to the murder of that child as a result of this new law.
The RHA puts pregnant women and the children they are carrying at great risk, as the law no longer recognizes harm that may be done to their child. These statements are not hyperbolic–the concrete proof of this is that the Queens DA’s office was charging Hobson with second-degree abortion until it realized that it could no longer do so as a result of the RHA.
Irigoyen, who screamed for her baby’s life, would likely be devastated to know that taking her child’s life has come with no criminal penalty in New York as a result of the legislature and Cuomo’s radical abortion expansion. The RHA needs to be repealed. Killing an innocent child should never be a penalty-free crime.
