As the fight over abortion continues to rage across the United States, New York City will be a very interesting place to watch. That’s because Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani has one religious leader worried about how crisis pregnancy centers will be handled.
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The Rev. Jim Harden, CEO of Compass Care Pregnancy Services, told CBN News that Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, is “ostensibly pro-abortion” and has “piggy-backed on left-wing causes like abortion, transgenderism, and environmental protection” despite being Muslim.
Muslims generally oppose abortion after a certain point in pregnancy, but Harden said it was unclear how Mamdani would address the issue once he took office.
“We don’t know exactly which Mr. Mamdani will be going to work on January 1st, but when he was campaigning, he campaigned very hard against pro-life pregnancy centers,” he said. “And he claimed he was going to protect New Yorkers from fraud and deception perpetrated by pro-life pregnancy centers like ours, which, of course, is ridiculous.”
Harden said Mamdani was committed to enforcing Local Law 17, which Harden said was “specifically targeted at pro-life pregnancy centers in New York City and was essentially written as a watershed for pro-abortion political elites.”
Leaders of the pro-life movement said they were “very concerned” about what would happen if Mamdani took office and believed it would be a “challenge”. One of Mamdani’s campaign documents went after crisis pregnancy centers and promised that as mayor, his administration would take action.
“The Mamdani Administration will protect New Yorkers from false or deceptive information spread by Crisis Pregnancy Centers, including lies about abortion safety and medications, and will implement Local Law Section 17, which requires disclosure of whether these centers have licensed medical professionals,” the document reads. “We will also strengthen the City’s Abortion Access Hub by doubling funding to $2 million, which confidentially helps New Yorkers find abortion providers and supports those living outside of New York State through the process of scheduling appointments and finding financial assistance.”
Of course, Mamdani is not the only politician allegedly targeting crisis pregnancy centers, with Harden explaining what he believes creates so much negativity around these facilities. For example, New York State Attorney General Letitia James tried to block crisis pregnancy centers from advertising abortion reversal methods, but a U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled against James in this case.
“By the way, I believe that what is driving the attacks on pregnancy centers by people like Attorney General Letitia James, who supported Mamdani’s election, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and other pro-abortion extremists, is essentially a Marxist ideology, and one of the main pillars of Marxism is atheism.”
He warned that communism seeks to dismantle, destabilize and destroy societies built on Judeo-Christian frameworks. Attacks on crisis pregnancy centers follow this pattern, Harden said.
“The reason they attack pregnancy centers is because they represent important truths that are the basis or foundation of all civilized order,” he said. “And a key truth in the constitutional rule of law is that, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, we are endowed by our Creator, not by government, with certain unalienable rights. The first of these is the right that presupposes all other rights: the right to life.”
Harden said it is essential to understand this right, especially given that humans are created in the image of God and designed to “reflect God and His character.”
“When you destroy God or remove God from the civilized order and the global interconnectedness of nation-states, even in domestic politics, what you are left with is a power vacuum that governments are happy to jump in and fill,” he said.
Mr Harden said lawyers for the Thomas More Society had already been consulted by Compass Care Pregnancy Services and were working on a plan to “push back” if Mamdani targeted their efforts.
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