Before it’s all said and done with, New York’s extremist abortion law will undoubtedly be the cause of countless sick consequences. But we won’t have to wait to see these consequences manifest, because they’ve already come to life in a disturbing murder case out of Queens.

Prosecutors this week dropped a charge of criminal abortion from the list of felonies hanging over the head of 48-year-old Anthony Hobson, who is being tried for the murder of his 35-year-old pregnant girlfriend. While Hobson will still face charges of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and criminal weapons possession for the stabbing, he cannot be charged with killing Jennifer Irigoyen’s five-month-old fetus. Why? Because New York’s abortion law now makes it perfectly legal to kill an unborn child right up until the moment of birth.

In an article about the prosecutor’s decision to drop the abortion charge, the New York Post noted that “at least 38 states and the federal government have made it a crime to kill a fetus against the mother’s wishes.”

But that’s no longer the case in New York, where lawmakers have declared it open season on unborn babies.

“The fact that this is no longer the case in New York shows how out of step this new law is both with the rest of America and with common sense,” Rev. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life told the NY Post.

Republican Assemblyman Brian Manktelow was similarly disgusted. “With New York’s law, we’re saying you can take a life and escape any punishment. How as a society can you allow that to happen?”

Critics of the law – and the ramifications it had on the Hobson case – say that it is now legal for an assailant to cause the death of a woman’s unborn child without any consequences beyond charges of assault. In Hobson’s case, he was already in plenty of hot water without the abortion charge, but what if his girlfriend had lived? What if she had only lost the baby? Prosecutors would have still had a case against him, but it would have included much milder charges than he deserved given the gravity of his actions and the horrifying results.

Democrats in New York say the door is still open for such crimes to be charged under first-degree assault sentencing guidelines, and they insist that these are much stiffer than the penalties for unlawful abortion, which are now off the table.

That may be true in fact (and it may not be), but it doesn’t change the moral implications of this law. As of now, neither police nor prosecutors nor judges nor juries can consider the life of an unborn child as a relevant issue under the criminal code. That’s reprehensible and insane.

Guaranteed, this will not be the last time we hear about all the good this “pro-woman” law is doing for New York.