New York State Insider: New York State Assemblyman Tom Abinanti 92nd District: A Plan to Protect Reproductive Freedom From the Reactionaries.

 

Statement By Assemblymember Tom Abinanti: Reproductive Healthcare is a Human Right.  

New York Must Be a Sanctuary State for Women and Providers.

News reports indicate that the United States Supreme Court is poised to overrule its landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. While the rest of the civilized world is recognizing that reproductive freedom is a human right, the American reactionaries want to bring the United States back to the dark ages. 

New York must be a Sanctuary State for women and providers – amend the New York constitution to protect the right to bodily autonomy, strengthen New York’s protections for access to reproductive health facilities and enact a law to resist enforcement in New York of out-of-state abortion-related “convictions” and civil judgements. 

As a former pro-bono attorney for the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion, I developed a special understanding of the challenges that women face in seeking reproductive healthcare.  I was pleased to co-sponsor and vote for  New York’s Reproductive Health Act (Chapter 1 of the Laws of 2019) that enacted the Roe v. Wade protections into New York law. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to subvert those rights on a national level, I am calling for passage of a package of three bills that I sponsor. 

1. Constitutional Amendment (A.9605) - protects reproductive freedom. The amendment reads: “Personal reproductive liberty. An individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed.” 

2. Clinic Access Protection Act (A.3902) - strengthens New York’s law that protects women accessing health care facilities that provide reproductive health care.

3. Patient and Provider Protections (A. 10116) -  protects providers and recipients of reproductive healthcare services in New York State from attempts by other states to criminalize healthcare legally provided in New York and protect the providers and patients from civil actions in those states.