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For Immediate Release: June 24, 2022
Media Contact: Michele Sterlace, 716-864-1454, [email protected]
In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s official overturn of Roe vs. Wade today in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Feminists Choosing Life of New York (FCLNY) issues the following commentary:
We are grateful the High Court recognized abortion rights do not exist within our Constitution. Abortion rights are now a matter of state policy. We support science which clearly demonstrates that unborn children are human beings. FCLNY believes all unborn children deserve protection under the 14th Amendment and that more must be done to end the violence of abortion and empower women. Abortion oppresses women and kills children.
New York enacted the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) in anticipation of Roe’s possible overturn, in 2019. The RHA allows women to abort their unborn children throughout all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason within 24 weeks of pregnancy, and thereafter for “health reasons” broadly applied in NY as including reasons unrelated to the physical life or health of either the pregnant mother or her unborn child. Women can abort their children legally in NY after 25 weeks of pregnancy for reasons that include economic circumstances, age and familial status. Thousands of later-term abortions (20+ weeks gestation) occur in NY. A majority of later-term abortions are “elective” and performed on “healthy women and healthy fetuses.”
Under the RHA, 3rd party criminal assailants can also kill later-term unborn children by attacking their pregnant mothers, without prosecution for their death. Pregnant women in NY have been viciously attacked and killed, along with their unborn children, without full criminal accountability, because of the RHA’s repeal of NY’s long-standing fetal homicide law.
Plaintiff-victims have challenged the U.S. Constitutionality of NY’s RHA. Portions of the lawsuit are either on appeal before the Second Circuit or awaiting resolution in NY’s Northern Federal District Court. Special counsel with the Women’s Alliance Against Violence represent the plaintiff-victims, which include victims of domestic violence that claim, among other things, the RHA incentivizes violence against pregnant women.
The question is: Who is profiting from NY’s ruthless abortion policies and protections? It’s surely not women, children or the women’s rights movement.
NY has the highest abortion rate of any state in the nation. NY has more abortion clinics than near every other state in the U.S. New York City is an epicenter of abortion in this country, with nearly as many minority children aborted as birthed.
The idea of reproductive “choice” is almost non-existent in NY. It’s become practically impossible for poor NY women facing unplanned pregnancies to “choose” anything but abortion.
NY is hostile to pregnant women, in particular poor pregnant women and families.
Rather than enact pending NY bills that would have supported the “choice” of impoverished mothers to birth rather than abort their unplanned children, including proposed NY laws that would have extended pregnancy care coverage for Medicaid recipients, provided a diaper allowance for poor families as well as affordable child care, Governor Hochul earmarked 35 million dollars for abortion and enacted a law that put pregnancy resource centers across the state at risk.
Lastly, NY abortion policy is unclear regarding exactly who can perform later-term abortions and where they must occur. Further, NY fails to require that all abortion facilities are licensed and inspected. There is also no state law requiring NY to track, report and publish abortion complication data. Evidence suggests that when abortion regulations are lax, like in NY, women suffer a substantially greater risk of abortion related complications.
With Roe’s overturn, an increase in out-of-state women traveling to NY for abortion is expected. As a result, we are bolstering our efforts to better meet the needs of pregnant women and spark dialogue. These efforts include advocating for legislation to support pregnant women and families, conducting resource fairs in cities across NY, facilitating peer support groups for women victimized by trauma, including abortion, and hosting symposiums and community conversation circles to foster productive solutions to the continued issues faced by women and children.
FCLNY has created and/or is in the process of updating several comprehensive resource directories including an index for prospective birth mothers and adoptive parents, and guides to pregnancy resource centers and nutrition and lodging services for women and children across NY. Please see our fully updated Bread and Bed Resource Index and Pregnancy Resource Center Guide.
FCLNY raises awareness and helps address the root causes of publicly sanctioned lethal violence, including abortion, war, and capital punishment. We engage in grassroots activism and embrace the core principles of non-violence and non-discrimination.
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