A charge of criminal abortion has been dropped from the indictment against a man who murdered a pregnant woman as New York state no longer recognises it as a crime according to its new, extreme abortion law.

Prosecutors initially included a charge of abortion as well as murder against a man arrested Friday in his pregnant girlfriend’s killing — but rescinded it when they realised it the charge had been repealed by the legislature.

In the brutal murder, captured on CCTV, the man dragged the woman from her apartment and stabbed her in the stomach. “He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the baby!” shouted five-months-pregnant Jennifer Irigoyen around 1 a.m. as her attacker pulled her from her third-floor Ridgewood walk-up and down the stairs to the building’s entranceway, horrified witness Maurice Roman Zereoue told The New York Post.

A neighbour said she heard a man and a woman arguing loudly and then the victim “yelling … about wanting to protect her baby.’’

Her boyfriend was subsequently arrested and charged with the killing of both mother and unborn child, but that charge has now been reduced simply to the killing of the mother.