New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday he would seek to ensure that women have access to late-term abortions in the state even if conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court remove federal legal guarantees in place since the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Cuomo, a Democrat who is considered a potential candidate for his party's 2020 presidential nomination, proposed an amendment to the New York Constitution that he said would preserve the status quo regardless of future Supreme Court rulings.
If the Supreme Court were to overrule Roe v. Wade, as abortion opponents have long hoped, the procedure would remain legal only where state laws allow it.
In New York, a state law that dates to 1970 legalized abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and afterward only if the woman's life is at stake, with no exception for health. The law is not enforced but could be if Roe v. Wade were overruled, abortion advocates say.
The state's law was "revolutionary back in the day because it legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, but is now unchanged," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview this month. "The state law is not as protective as Roe," she said.
There were 29.6 abortions per 1,000 women in New York in 2014, compared to 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women nationally, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that supports abortion rights.
Cuomo told a Planned Parenthood rally in Albany, New York, on Monday that women's rights were under attack in Washington.
"As they threaten this nation with a possible Supreme Court nominee who will reverse Roe v. Wade," Cuomo said, according to a transcript provided by his office. "We're going to protect Roe v. Wade in the State of New York."
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a legal opinion in September making clear that federal court rulings supersede the state's 1970 law.
For a constitutional amendment to succeed in New York, majorities in the legislature must approve it twice, in successive terms, and voters must approve it.
Republicans control the New York Senate, although it is possible some Republicans might support such an amendment if pressured by constituents who favor abortion rights, said Costas Panagopoulos, a political scientist at New York's Fordham University.
For years, states have planned for a day when the Supreme Court might overrule Roe v. Wade. Some 19 states have laws that could restrict abortion in that event, while seven have laws that would still guarantee the right to an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Just gonna put a preemptive, if you don't believe abortion is right, then don't get an abortion. Don't force your beliefs on people who are okay with getting an abortion.
I'll never understand how they can be so for fetus rights and then not give a shit about the child and/or mother when it's born. Fucking disgusting hypocrites.
Reminder that "late term abortion" refers to abortions which take place after 20 weeks and is only performed in cases where "the fetus is gravely or fatally impaired or the womans life or physical health is at risk" [1]
They represent a tiny, TINY fraction of abortions performed, and banning them is, in some cases, a death sentence for the mother and an unwarranted intrusion of politics into women's health.
I think abortion will be state-by-state within 4 years, which sadly isn't that different than how it is in practice today.
If you were forced to throw a live baby or a petrie-dish of fertilized embryos off of a roof, what would you chose? You can only chose one or the other.
Yeah, Conservatives are too dumb to even think that, let alone imaging that.
If you were forced to throw a live baby or a petrie-dish of fertilized embryos off of a roof, what would you chose? You can only chose one or the other.
Yeah, Conservatives are too dumb to even think that, let alone imaging that.