A Virginia bill that would have flung wide open the door to late-term abortions in that state caused a nationwide backlash and accusations that supporters of the measure were promoting infanticide. The bill died in a House of Delegates subcommittee vote last Monday, but the controversy about it has since inspired a push in the U.S. Senate to protect newborn babies from abortionists.

Democrats who supported a failed effort this week in Virginia to weaken protections for unborn babies in later stages of pregnancy insist they were not as callous toward late-term infants as their arguments made them sound.

Pro-lifers grieved last week when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law stripping unborn babies in the state of all legal rights and erasing previous protections for mothers. New York wasn’t the first state to legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and it likely won’t be the last.

The state previously protected babies from abortion after 24 weeks of gestation. The new law allows an abortion at any time during a pregnancy if it “is necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” (The word “patient” refers to the mother.)

New York, with a newly empowered Democratic legislature, legalized late-term abortion on Tuesday and removed criminal penalties for botched abortions or other violence that leads to an in utero baby’s death. The sweeping law would remove the state’s ability to prosecute a Kermit Gosnell–type offender or a person who kills a child in utero through domestic abuse, for example.

New York state weakened protections for unborn babies on Tuesday, codifying in state law the provisions granted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion.

WASHINGTON—Students and young adults made up the bulk of the crowd at Friday’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., proving that a new generation has taken on the pro-life mantle.

A federal appeals court last week lifted a lower court ban that prohibited Texas from cutting Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. U.S.