NY Gov’s ‘Chicken Little’ Abortion Act

ANOTHER Supreme Court nomination by a Republican president, another attempt to use cynical scare tactics by the Empire State’s own version of Chicken Little.

An executive order signed last week by Gov. Cuomo is a kneejerk attempt to protect his left flank from his current rival and newly minted “democratic socialist” Cynthia Nixon.

In this instance, the sky is supposedly falling because President Trump had the audacity to pick a well respected and longtime member of the federal bench as his nominee for the US Supreme Court.

And, before he was even named, much less his confirmation hearings began, the psychics of the Democratic Party already seem to know how Judge Brett Kavanaugh will vote on a myriad of issues — many of which haven’t even reached the Supreme Court’s docket.

At a news conference last week, Cuomo breathlessly announced that his signing of the executive order “protects a woman’s right to choose, protects a woman’s right to contraceptive care.” The problem with this scenario is that no one had even discussed taking these rights away.

For close to a half-century, the Democratic Party has used Roe v. Wade as a political bogeyman to scare women and score political points by threatening that electing Republicans would result in this landmark decision on abortion rights being overturned.

History puts the lie to this scare tactic. Since the decision on Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, there have been six Republican presidents. For 20 of those years, there’s been a Republican majority in either the House or the Senate and for a four-year period under George W. Bush, the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Somehow, through all of this, laws regarding a woman’s access to contraception and abortion in New York state have remained basically unchanged.

When one takes a close look at the governor’s executive order, it becomes clear that Cuomo’s actions aren’t focused on maintaining the status quo.

He, in fact, is the one attempting to bring about radical change and carry out a bold implementation of his political will that not only circumvents the Legislature but will also allow minors and even preteens access to free contraception without parental notification or consent.

Something I doubt will sit well with most parents in the Empire State.

Further ignoring the will of the people, Cuomo is also calling on the state Senate to return to Albany and pass the controversial abortion-expansion bill that has significant opposition.

The governor’s actions totally ignore national polls that fall in line with a 2013 poll conducted by the Chiaroscuro Foundation that found 80 percent of New Yorkers oppose late-term abortion through the ninth month and 75 percent oppose allowing someone other than a doctor to perform an abortion.

Cuomo’s proposed change to the law would allow both.

Not to be outdone by Cuomo’s pre-emptive strike, by Tuesday afternoon, Cynthia Nixon was standing behind a podium, waving a coat hanger in the air as she claimed that the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh would signal the return of back-alley abortions to our state.

Cuomo, Nixon and other Democrats who use SCOTUS to play politics and fearmonger should take a tip from Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey and Foxy Loxy, who found that the real danger and consequence of shouting that “the sky is falling” is losing one’s credibility.