James backs abortion program
With Supreme Court decision imminent, lawmakers say state needs to do more
In December, state Attorney General Letitia James called for funding to support abortion access for people coming to New York from states where access is restricted, or was likely to be imperiled based on the potential demise of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
On Monday, James extended her push to increase access to abortion in New York for people coming from out of state by throwing her support behind newly introduced legislation to do just do that.
“We will continue to act to ensure that every New Yorker and those beyond the lines of our state have access to this absolutely life-saving and critical right,” the Democrat said at a news conference in Manhattan alongside state lawmakers and advocates.
The proposed “reproductive freedom and equity program” is estimated to cost $50 million
annually, according to Assemblywoman Jessica Gonzalez-rojas, D-queens, a sponsor of the bill.
If passed, it would send money to the state Department of Health to fund grants to abortion providers and to nonprofits that assist people in accessing abortion care, such as by covering insurance or transportation costs.
There may be hundreds of thousands of people who come to New York to access abortion care, Gonzalezrojas said.
“We have to be ready and willing and able to welcome everybody with compassion, with dignity and with quality abortion care,” said the lawmaker, who is the former executive director at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.
The legislation is one of several Democrat-sponsored bills filed since last week’s reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks. The state legislative session is scheduled to
end early next month.
“We will not be subject to the arbitrary whims of a politicized Supreme Court, nor can we fund health care services via private fundraising,” said state Sen. Cordell Cleare, D-harlem, another sponsor of the bill. “To do so is an effrontery to the principles of equity, fairness and good government.”
James, as attorney general, has long fought for increased abortion rights in New York. She has pointed to the ideological balance on the high court, with a majority of justices appointed by Republican presidents, and the decision to take up the case as a sign that Roe v. Wade was likely to be overturned.
In 2019, New York passed the Reproductive Health Act to codify abortion rights in state law. Lawmakers in recent days have called to take it further.
James recently offered her backing for a state constitutional amendment to enshrine those rights, a change that would make it considerably harder to take them away in the event a Republican political wave swept through a state that has only deepened its blue hue in recent years. Gov. Kathy Hochul has also signaled her support for it as “planning for the worst-case scenario.”
In the fall, certain lawmakers showed their concern with restrictions on abortion in Texas and said there was more to do in New York.
“It is not enough to have a right to an abortion in name if you do not have the resources to access it,” state state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a Bronx Democrat running for Congress, said in September.