By Ross Douthat, New York Times - In a sense it’s not surprising that a renewed debate about abortion would begin in New York State, which passed a law last week — since imitated, to more controversy, by Virginia Democrats — ratifying the right to kill human beings in utero in the third trimester... Almost 50 years ago, in 1970, New York passed the nation’s most liberal abortion law, a template for the Roe v. Wade decision two years later. And the state has a justifiable reputation as (to quote a 2005 New York magazine story) “the abortion capital of America” — with a strong pro-choice consensus and high abortion rates.