While excommunicating Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his pro-abortion flunkies is a popular notion, it may not be the solution to the problem. Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio says he will not excommunicate the governor who last month signed into law the most permissive abortion law in the country. The bishop bases his decision on sound reasoning. First of all, Cuomo and his allies would wear such an action as a badge of courage. He could play the martyr and say, “Look what the big bad Church has done to me.”

Second, for all practical purposes, the governor probably has excommunicated himself by his actions. He has clearly distanced himself from Catholic teaching and makes no excuses for it. He has chosen political expediency rather than stand on moral principles.

Gov. Cuomo says that he does not govern according to his religious beliefs. In other words, he leaves his conscience at the door when he enters the political arena. No one can separate his conscience from his actions and that includes any governor whose job it is to uphold the common good.

It is one thing to say that he, as governor, must enforce the law, but it is another to actively support and revel in the passage of such an evil law that allows children to be murdered even as that baby is leaving the mother’s womb. This is infanticide, pure and simple, and it should not be celebrated as the governor did when he led the cheers after signing the legislation and then ordered Manhattan’s Freedom Tower to be lit in pink to further the celebration.

The governor says that he is simply codifying the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that led to the legalization of abortion in the United States in 1973. But in fact, his latest actions go far beyond what was permitted by Roe.

Many were willing to go along with legalized abortion when President Bill Clinton proclaimed that the legislation aimed to make abortion, “safe, legal and rare.” That was just meaningless rhetoric and has led to a trip down the slippery slope as we had predicted. We should be embarrassed and ashamed, particularly because our governor and many of those who signed onto this mess are baptized Catholics and should know better. They have fooled so many with their arrogant words about women’s health and freedom of choice when we should have realized that abortion ends in a death and no one has the right to choose to end someone else’s life.

The only way to stop this abomination is to vote the culprits out of office. Let us not forget this miscarriage of justice and vote our conviction that all life is sacred from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death.