By Dave Andrusko
New York pro-abortion Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a package of bills yesterday intended to increase the number of abortions performed, protect abortionists from legal action, and harass pregnancy health centers.
“At a time when women and children need more support than ever, we are disappointed to see New York continue to focus on promoting abortion,” said Kristen Curran, director of government relations for the New York Catholic Conference. “This package of bills seeks to encourage abortion tourism, rather than helping women and children who may be in need. As a state that claims to value autonomy and choice, New York should stop presenting abortion as the best and only option for struggling women, and harassing any pro-life pregnancy center that may help women keep their babies. This abortion-or-nothing narrative only demeans women.”
In her public address, Gov. Hochul alluded to the draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and leaked on May 2 which called for the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
“My friends, the sky is literally on the verge of falling in the next week or two and that’s why we are here today. The right to control our own bodies is supposed to be settled by now, or so we thought.”
According to Newsmax, in a tweet sent later in the day, Hochul was blunt about how future abortion issues would be handled in New York.
“This is my message to those who are trying to take away the fundamental right to an abortion: Not here. Not now. Not ever.”
Micaiah Bilger reported that
“Several of the bills that she signed would protect New York abortionists. One prohibits state authorities from cooperating with other states’ investigations of abortionists or extraditing abortionists to other states where abortions are limited or banned, Axios reports.
“Others target pro-life advocates who help pregnant and parenting mothers in need.”
According to Axios, the six bills also included
- S. 9039A makes it a right to sue a person who takes action to stop someone from accessing health care that is protected under state law, such as abortion.
- S. 9077A protects abortion providers in New York from being extradited to other states that ban the procedure. It also bars state law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state probes investigating abortions considered legal in New York.
- S. 9079B prohibits “professional misconduct charges” against New York providers who perform an abortion on a patient that comes from a state where the procedure is banned.
- S. 9080B bars medical malpractice insurance companies from “taking any adverse action” against an abortion provider who performed the procedure on an out-of-state patient.
- S. 9384A includes abortion providers in New York’s “address confidentiality program,” allowing for them to obscure their addresses for safety reasons.
- S. 470 establishes a task force to examine “the unmet health and resource needs facing pregnant women in New York,” as well as the impact of crisis pregnancy centers, which are organizations that look like abortion clinics and aim to persuade pregnant people from having the procedure.
There were 105,380 abortions in 2017 in the state, according to the Guttmacher Institute.