News from Senator Daphne Jordan
February 6, 2019
In the wake of Governor Cuomo and the Senate Democratic Majority’s extreme Reproductive Health Act (RHA), my Senate Republican colleagues and I demanded important health care protections for women and babies during our recent session. We pushed to put back into the public health law requirements on record keeping related to abortion. These important requirements were removed from the public health law when the Senate Democratic Majority rammed through their extreme abortion legislation that, sadly, is now state law.
The record keeping requirement ensures that an attending physician maintains all life-sustaining efforts if an abortion results in a live birth, and include whether efforts to sustain a baby’s life succeeded or failed. It also requires that vital statistics be kept. Senate Democrats voted our common sense measure down.
Enacted on January 22, the Senate Democratic Majority’s extreme measure allows late-term abortion – for almost any reason – right up until the moment of birth to protect the patient’s life or health. This is too broad. The lack of a specific definition for a “patient’s health” essentially makes abortion a free for all. The RHA enables anyone to claim mental distress, even financial circumstances, or simply not wanting a child, as a part of their health concern. It is cruel and barbaric.
The Senate Democrat’s RHA also removed physician record-keeping on medical abortion from the public health law, meaning in cases where babies are born during an abortion, no record of life-sustaining efforts needs to be kept. In addition, the Senate Democrat’s radical law also decriminalized all forms of abortion, including acts of violence against pregnant women.
As a pro-life mom of two sons, I opposed and spoke against the RHA and will continue working to protect the most vulnerable among us.
