First NY, Now Virginia: Democrat Proposes Bill Pushing to Abort Babies 'Just Seconds Before' Birth

Emily Jones

CBN News spoke with Virginia Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert who is the Majority Leader and chairman of the subcommittee that killed the bill. Hear his thoughts on the measure and what the future holds. Watch above.

Virginia Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran proposed a bill this week to allow a woman to have an abortion while she is in labor and just moments away from giving birth.

House Bill 2491, also known as The Repeal Act, would remove all existing restrictions on abortion in Virginia.

According to a bill summary, it removes the requirement that late-term abortions be performed in a hospital, that an ultrasound is given beforehand, and that at least two physicians "certify that a third-trimester abortion is necessary to prevent the woman's death or impairment of her mental or physical health."

The measure also removes the requirement that "any such impairment to the woman's health would be substantial and irremediable."

Tran engaged in a heated exchange with subcommittee chairman Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) on the Virginia Delegate House floor Monday. A video of the incident has since gone viral on social media.

VA House GOP@vahousegop Heartbreaking... This isn't in New York, this isn't in California, this happened just this week right here in Virginia. @VAHouseDems proposed legislation to provide abortions up to just seconds before that precious child takes their first breath. Watch for yourself. 10.4K 3:32 PM - Jan 29, 2019

Here's the exchange:

Gilbert: So how late in the third trimester would you be able to do that?

Tran: It's very unfortunate that our physician witnesses were not able to attend today.

Gilbert: No, I'm talking about your bill. How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?

Tran: Or physical health.

Gilbert: Okay. I'm talking about the mental health.

Tran: Through the third trimester. The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.

Gilbert: Okay. But to the end of the third trimester?

Tran: Yep. I don't think we have a limit in the bill.

Gilbert: Where it's obvious a woman is about to give birth, that she has physical signs that she is about to give birth. Would that be a point at which she could still request an abortion if she was so certified? She's dilating.

Tran: Mr. Chairman, that would be a decision that the doctor, the physician, and the woman would make at that point.

Gilbert: I understand that. I'm asking if your bill allows that.

Tran: My bill would allow that, yes.

For now, the subcommittee recommended The Repeal Act to be laid on the table. It is not expected to pass the Republican-held Senate. But this is an election year in Virginia, and Republicans only hold a slim majority in the state legislature and they're warning that Democrats will have an easy path to pass the measure next year if they win control, especially since Gov. Ralph Northam has indicated full support for the idea.

Virginia's attempt to expand abortion laws comes on the heels of a new abortion measure that was signed into law last week in New York. The Empire State's Reproductive Health Act removed restrictions on late-term abortions, allowing unborn babies to be aborted up until the day of birth.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said the measure was a "giant step forward for women's rights."

Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, called the law "barbarism."

MORE: 'Shameful and Demonic': Hillsong NYC Pastor Speaks Out Against New NY Abortion Law

(cbn.com)

BREAKING :Ten Earthquakes Strike The Coast of Northern California In Less Than 24 Hours | Is The “BIG ONE” Coming?

Ten earthquakes of preliminary magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.5 struck off the coast of Northern California between Saturday and Sunday, the United States Geological Survey reports.

The series of earthquakes rumbled beneath the Pacific Ocean, between 3 miles and 27 miles west of Petrolia in Humboldt County.

The first earthquake struck early Saturday morning at a magnitude of 4.3, while a second earthquake, of 3.2 magnitude, rumbled about 30 minutes later. Three additional earthquakes hit between 4:30 p.m. and 5:38 p.m. Saturday in the same area, registering magnitudes between 2.9 and 3.6, USGS reported. A 3.0-magnitude earthquake struck that night, at 11:37 p.m.

The geological activity continued into Sunday. USGS reported four earthquakes near Petrolia between 2:18 p.m. and 4:05 p.m. The earthquakes ranged in magnitude from 3.4 to 4.5.

More than 240 people, from Mendocino to McKinleyville, said they felt the 4.5-magnitude earthquake that struck Sunday at 2:18 p.m., according to the USGS’s online “Felt Report” page.

There was no initial word on damage or injury resulting from the quakes. The National Weather Service office in Eureka said Sunday afternoon there was no tsunami danger.

»»» Even SWAT Teams are Helpless Against This…

If you live in California, you’ll know the Big One is coming: a powerful earthquake of up to magnitude eight is headed for the state. Energy has been building up along the San Andreas Fault for more than a century. No-one knows exactly when or where, but that one day that energy will be unleashed.

It might strike at the heart of San Francisco, last devastated by a Big One in 1906. Or maybe it will tear through southern California like the magnitude 7.9 quake that hit in 1857 and ruptured some 225 miles of the San Andreas Fault.

More than 100 years on, it’s hard to predict exactly how hard the next Big One will hit. John Vidale, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and affiliate professor at the University of Washington, told Newsweek it won’t look like in the movies—cities won’t collapse into rubble and tsunamis probably won’t sweep through California. But without adequate preparations, the Big One could “cripple” the finances of a state that just became the fifth largest economy in the world.

What exactly is a “Big One,” and where could such an earthquake hit?

A tectonic boundary between the North American and the Pacific plates cuts through California. It’s a big fault where the two sides are moving three or four centimeters a year sideways. Strain builds up for one or two hundred years along that boundary, and then finally that strain becomes so great that the fault can’t take it anymore. It breaks and moves 15 ft or so all at once, causing an earthquake.

»»» MEGATHRUST EQ Cascadia Subduction Zone-BE PREPARED for Destruction -America’s natural nuclear bunkers

There’s three, four, five sections, to this fault—and many other faults running in parallel—but we worry about a Big One striking in the north or in the south of the San Andreas. There’s a part between north and south in central California that seems act like a buffer. There’s some chance a rupture could go end-to-end, but we think it’s either unlikely or that it just doesn’t happen.

How often do these massive earthquakes hit?

It’s every few hundred years. The earthquakes that have happened in the meantime are still devastating to a local area, but instead of magnitude eight, they’re more like magnitude seven. It’s a logarithmic scale, so an eight has about 30 times more energy than a magnitude seven.

Don’t smaller quakes help to dissipate some of the energy that’s building up deep underground?

Those little earthquakes let out only a tiny amount of energy compared to the big ones. It would take 10 magnitude seven earthquakes to let out the strain of a magnitude eight. We don’t have that many, so those little earthquakes hardly slow the big ones at all.

»»» What You Do In The Next 5 Seconds Will Determine If You And Your Family Survive Or Die…?

Does that mean the next big one is inevitable?

That’s right. When we look at the history of the fault, we can see these big earthquakes have happened many times over the last few thousand years, so yeah, it’s an inevitability. We just don’t know if it’s going to be now or two hundred years from now.

What kind of impact would a northern or southern California Big One have? The impact of the northern big one would be tremendous—I mean the San Andreas runs right through San Francisco. It’s quite a lot closer to San Francisco than it is to Los Angeles. Downtown San Francisco is vulnerable—some of the oldest buildings survived the shaking back in 1906, but that doesn’t mean they’d be safe in the next earthquake by any means. Many of the buildings are built close to the fault and on kind of soft ground that might liquify.

A southern Big One would likely strike a little further away from the heart of Los Angeles, so the impact might be smaller. On the other hand LA has a lot more stuff to break than San Francisco—a lot of it is pretty old. So I think the net expectation is similar north and south. The fault is further away in the South, but it’s also riper, more ready, to go than the one in the north.

More generally, there’s a lot of disasters that come from the strong shaking of an earthquake. It would certainly cause landslides, and conceivably chemical spills. We’re also concerned about fires. What about tsunamis?

Tsunamis aren’t a big worry here. For an earthquake to make a tsunami it would have to be offshore—not be on the main part of the San Andreas. The ground would move sideways, not so much vertically as in other places, and it’s hard to make a big wave moving sideways. But a lot of other things could happen.

When the Tōhoku earthquake hit Japan in 2011, it caused a disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Are there are any nuclear reactors at risk from a Big One in California?

Not around here—there’s one up by San Onofre but it’s been turned off. There’s been a lot of debate about nuclear reactors. Engineers argue they can make reactors safe, but there have been enough accidents over the years that for safety’s sake they are tending not to build them in most places anymore.

If infrastructure doesn’t rebound, what effects will this have on California?

It’s certainly in the realm of possibility that the earthquake causes something that cripples the economy for a long time. Nobody expected the Fukushima reactor to be a dominant problem in Japan’s 2011 earthquake, for example. There’s always a small chance of some very serious unexpected problems.

It’s also possible that a big earthquake might have less effect than we expect. It’s just very hard to predict.

The Big One is worrisome for the government because it disrupts a large area. But for individuals, the moderate-size earthquakes that are right under our feet are often the worst threat.

Los Angeles, for example is filled with faults, and many of them could have a magnitude seven earthquake. A magnitude seven on a smaller fault might well do more damage than the Big One on the San Andreas. The Big One is only part of the danger here.

World War 3: Russia warns US of 'NEW ERA' after Trump scraps INF nuclear treaty

World War 3: Russia has warned the US its on the brink of a 'new era' (Image: GETTY/EPA )

RUSSIA has warned the US it has entered a “new era” after Donald Trump abandoned one of the last major arms control treaties with Moscow.

By REBECCA PERRING

PUBLISHED: 14:16, Mon, Feb 4, 2019UPDATED: 14:32, Mon, Feb 4, 2019

Trump administration officials cited Russia’s noncompliance with the treaty as the reason for leaving the deal, in a move which threatens to undermine peace and stability between Russia and the US.

But Vladimir Putin's Moscow maintains it is not in breach of the treaty.

World War 3: Russia's Sergei Lavrov said it wasn't the start of a Cold War (Image: EPA )

Russian media threatens US with 100 megaton nuclear doomsday device after key arms treaty fails

The INF treaty banned land-based nuclear capable missiles with a range between 300 and 3,200 miles in 1987 when Russia and the US had populated much of Europe with intermediate-ranged nuclear missiles. The ban eliminated this entire class of missiles and went down as one of the most successful acts of arms control ever.

But Russia's response to the US didn't stop there.

A BBC review of Russian newspapers, some state-owned and all adhering to state narratives or censored by the Kremlin, revealed some truly apocalyptic ideas.

"If the Americans deploy their new missiles near Russia's borders, and in response we deploy ours, then of course, the risk of [nuclear] conflict rises sharply," an arms control expert told one paper.

"If US missiles are deployed in Poland or the Baltic states, they'll be able to reach Russia in minutes. In such an event, the way Russia currently conceives using nuclear weapons, as a retaliatory strike, becomes impossible, since there won't be time to work out which missiles have been launched against Russia, what their trajectory and their targets are," he continued. "This is why there is now a temptation for both us and for them to adopt the doctrine of s preemptive strike."

This expert argues that the INF's demise means both the US and Russia now have to consider nuking the other at the first sign of conflict because missile attacks won't be as predictable as longer-range salvos from the continental US and Russia's mainland.

But the expert neglects to mention that US and Russian nuclear submarines can already fire from almost anywhere at sea, already confusing targets and trajectories and taking minutes to reach Russian forces.

Read more: In a fiery warning to rivals, Putin says any country that nukes Russia will 'drop dead'

Finally, Russian media turned to what's quickly becoming a propaganda crutch in communicating Moscow's might: The Doomsday device.

Russia recently admitted to having built one of the more insane nuclear weapons of all time in the form of an undersea torpedo with a 100-megaton nuclear warhead that's designed to be unstoppable to all current missile defenses and create tsunami-sized waves and a radioactive hellstorm that stomps out life on earth for thousands of square miles for decades.

Read more: Russia just showed off a potentially world-ending nuclear 'doomsday' torpedo that the US can't stop

Since they announced the weapon, they've already used it to threaten Europe. But now with the INF treaty in tatters, a military expert told a Russian paper that the doomsday device could see use.

"It cannot be excluded that one of the Poseidon with a 100 megaton nuclear warhead will lay low off the US coast, becoming 'the doomsday weapon.' Thus an attack on Russia, will become a suicidal misadventure," the paper states.

Read more: A new Russian video may show a 'doomsday machine' able to trigger 300-foot tsunamis - but nuclear weapons experts question why you'd ever build one

Russia's Poseidon doomsday device doesn't change the mutually assured destruction dynamic between the Washington and Moscow, it only provides a way to destroy more natural life in the process.

US support of ‘dictators, butchers & extremists’ ruined Middle East – Iranian FM on Trump’s SOTU

© Reuters / Jim Young; Salvatore Di Nolfi

“Dictators, butchers and extremists” backed by the US are leaving the Middle East in ruins, Iran’s foreign minister said, after Donald Trump labeled his country “the world’s leading sponsor of terror” and a “corrupt dictatorship.”

“Iranians – including our Jewish compatriots – are commemorating 40 years of progress despite US pressure, just as Donald Trump again makes accusations against us,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told his Twitter followers, referring to the US president’s attacks on Iran in his 2019 State of the Union address.

US hostility “has led it to support dictators, butchers and extremists, who’ve only brought ruin to our region,” Zarif stated.

Javad Zarif ✔@JZarif Iranians—including our Jewish compatriots—are commemorating 40 yrs of progress despite US pressure, just as @realDonaldTrump again makes accusations against us @ #SOTU2019. US hostility has led it to support dictators, butchers & extremists, who've only brought ruin to our region 874 12:11 AM - Feb 6, 2019

In his second SOTU address, Trump sought to justify recent US actions against Iran. He assured lawmakers that his administration “has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran.”

Going further, Trump said the US had walked out of the “disastrous” Iranian nuclear deal – which was the result of years of talks and a concerted diplomatic effort by five world powers – “to ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons.”

The US also re-imposed the “toughest ever” sanctions on Iran, targeting its energy and transport sectors. Consequently, Iranian banks were suspended from accessing the global SWIFT financial messaging system.

Zarif’s remarks are in tune with previous comments from Tehran. Just last year, the country’s top diplomat told his French counterpart that the US and its allies “have turned our region into a gunpowder depot by selling arms.”

Later, the foreign minister issued the same message to Europe. “[The] US and Europeans should stop pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons into our region instead of questioning Iran’s missiles,” Zarif wrote on Twitter.

READ MORE: Weapons ending up with terrorists is OK, as long as Obama did it: The world according to CNN

Washington has a large pool of allies in the Middle East, mainly among the oil-rich Gulf monarchies. Some of them are involved in the lingering civil war in Yemen, which has pushed the country to the brink of famine, while others are constantly blamed by international NGOs for human rights abuses and for silencing political dissent.

That aside, the US has been fueling the Syrian war by continuously supplying opposition groups with arms, some of which eventually made their way into the hands of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists and other extremist groups.