NY Abortion Law Coincides with Cuomo’s Approval Drop
Shortly after pursuing an aggressive, month-long legislative strategy which tackled a slew of issues ranging from gun laws to abortion, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) approval ratings have dipped to an all-time low, and statewide churches see the divisive Reproductive Health Act (RHA) as the primary catalyst.
“This is the one major thing that has gotten people’s attention, particularly about the later abortion,” said Ed Mechmann, director of public policy for the New York Archdiocese Respect Life office.
A Siena College poll released last week showed that 50 percent of New York voters viewed Cuomo unfavorably, and his job-performance rating plunged to 35 percent. While the majority of other newly enacted laws, including the Child Victims Act, engendered widespread support among voters, Cuomo’s controversial abortion law drew only a 31 percent margin of approval.
The Reproductive Health Act (RHA) — codified by the state Legislature last month — is one of the most expansive abortion laws in the country. Cuomo championed the legislation as the state’s protection mechanism against the Supreme Court potentially overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision which prohibited state bans on abortion.
“Today we are taking a giant step forward in the hard-fought battle to ensure a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion,” the governor wrote in a Jan. 22 press release.
But while the governor maintains that RHA merely enshrines Roe v. Wade into New York law, many pro-life groups have criticized it as a much more drastic measure to ensure that aborted babies are guaranteed to die at any stage of a pregnancy.
The controversy lies in the late term termination clause, which decriminalizes abortions performed after the third term of pregnancy and allows for women, with discretion of a healthcare practitioner, to end a pregnancy through Week 24. The law also allows for certified non-doctors, including nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, to perform abortion services, an effort which Cuomo deemed necessary to expand access to abortion.
The New York archdiocese has been especially vocal in denouncing RHA.
“Every poll shows that people do not approve of late term abortion,” Mechmann said. “I think the general controversy had to have some sort of impact on [Cuomo’s] approval ratings.”
Mechmann, a former lawyer whose New-York-City-based office aims to mobilize parishioner-led political advocacy, coins RHA a “guaranteed dead baby act.”
“It directly contradicts something that was in Roe v. Wade which is that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting unborn life after viability,” he said. “New York is essentially saying that we have an interest in promoting abortion, not in regulating it.”
Mechmann also took issue with the law’s implications on New York’s homocide policy, which previously criminalized the killing of an unborn child after the 24th week of pregnancy. RHA now regulates abortion under public health rather than criminal law, effectively removing assaults on unborn victims from its penal code. The effects of this change are unclear, yet opposers argue that forced abortions will no longer be punishable under law, enabling lesser-to-no sentencing for attacks on pregnant women.
“We proposed an amendment…all of which would have corrected this. But because it was all wrapped up in the abortion issue, the advocates didn’t want to deal with it and didn’t want to listen to it,” Mechmann said.
The Respect Life office’s comments come after a very public battle between Cardinal Timothy Dolen, the archbishop of New York, and Cuomo. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times, Cuomo deemed Dolen as part of the “religious right.”
“While Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and the Catholic Church are anti-choice, most Americans, including most Catholics, are pro-choice. The 73 percent of New Yorkers who support Roe includes 59 percent of Catholics,” he wrote.
Despite intense RHA backlash and a corresponding drop in favorability, Cuomo argues that he has been fundamentally successful in fulfilling campaign promises to defend the state against conservative Trump policies.
“We’ve had the most productive month in history that finally saw the passage of popular, long-stalled legislation, and we’re going to continue to move New York forward.”
