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Andrew Cuomo emerges as women’s champion
There are woefully few heroes in politics today. But two have emerged in recent weeks from my home state of New York: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
I’ve written before about heroic efforts by Bloomberg – an independent who left the Republican Party and was a Democrat before seeking elective office – to take on and clobber the National Rifle Association.
Now Cuomo – the scion of a family that is as Democratic and progressive as they come – has proposed a 10-point bill to codify women’s rights in New York State.
His plan, like Bloomberg’s, is highly controversial. It points a finger at many states that are moving right and eliminating women’s rights, while his plan moves left.
While Cuomo talked about his Women’s Equality Act at his State of the State address in January, he hasn’t formally released a copy of the plan. According to the Gotham Gazette, a nonpartisan online news site covering the policies and politics affecting New York City, the act “would include measures to ensure women equal pay to men, tackle discrimination against women who are pregnant, strengthen laws against human trafficking and set a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment in the workplace.
“But,” the Gotham Gazette continued, “what drew the greatest attention was Cuomo’s proposal to strengthen women’s rights to an abortion through the Reproductive Health Act. The bill, which has been sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins since 2007, would take a woman’s right to an abortion out of New York’s criminal code and make it part of health law, and also (would) allow for late-term abortions if a mother’s health is in danger.”
It takes incredible guts to stand up for women this way, though the governor walked back somewhat on his original plan after conservative and Republican Party outcries.
Except for several northeastern and West Coast states, including California, most have been moving in the opposite direction since the turn of the millennium. The Alan Guttmacher Institute late last year released a summary of what states have been doing on the abortion front from 2000 and 2011.
True, women’s rights extend way beyond abortion rights. But abortion is still the signal issue that speaks volumes about where states stand on all issues affecting women. The institute took into account whether states had passed any laws affecting the right to choose. They tracked whether a state:
- Mandated parental involvement before a minor’s abortion;
- Required pre-abortion counseling that is medically inaccurate or misleading;
- Extended a waiting period, paired with a requirement that counseling be conducted in person, necessitating two trips to the facility;
- Mandated a non-medically indicated ultrasound before an abortion;
- Prohibited Medicaid funding for an abortion except in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest;
- Restricted abortion coverage in private health insurance plans;
- Enacted medically inappropriate restrictions on providing medication abortion;
- Placed on abortion facilities “onerous requirements” not related to patient safety;
- Enacted unconstitutional bans on abortions before fetal viability or limitations on the circumstances under which an abortion can be performed after viability, and/or
- Placed a preemptive ban on abortion outright in the event Roe v. Wade is overturned.
The findings are quite troubling to those who believe a woman should have control over her own reproductive functions.
A substantial number of states shifted from moderately anti-abortion to “overtly hostile,” the Guttmacher Institute reports.
“In 2000, the country was almost evenly divided, with nearly a third of American women of reproductive age living in states solidly hostile to abortion rights, slightly more than a third in states supportive of abortion rights and close to a third in middle-ground states. By 2011, however, more than half of women of reproductive age lived in hostile states.”
So nobody can say that Cuomo is standing up for an easy fix. In fact, New York pundits say he has no better than a 50-50 chance of succeeding – winning passage of the act – in his own state. But at least he’s out there fighting for something that polls show tens of millions of American women want.
Bonnie Erbe, a TV host, writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. Email bonnie.scrippshoward@gmail.com.
Discussion | 5 comments
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G-ManFebruary 21, 2013 - 1:27 pm
Hey Bonnie..whatya wearing?..I'd be careful of Cuomo's finger..don't know where it's been I hear he and Bloomburp play "switch" a lot..you ever play switch...Chris Christie is good at it..You could lose a finger in those folds though...
Reply |StRFebruary 21, 2013 - 2:57 pm
Ms Erbe recieves awards from "The Population Council", which looks to me like a front for eugenics and depopulation worldwide.....look who is on the top of the list on the the Board of Trustees of this organization....Mark A. Walker...Chairman..Managing Director Rothschild London, United Kingdom....A mark of a good person is receiving lots of awards for killing babies and in actuality making women sick worldwide.
Reply |StRFebruary 21, 2013 - 3:07 pm
I believe Ms. Erbe graduated from GeorgeTown University which is a Masonic/Jesuit/Illuminati training ground...Google....United States Presidents and The Illuminati / Masonic Power ogoogle Georgetown Illuminati.
Reply |StRFebruary 21, 2013 - 3:28 pm
Andrew Cuomo graduated from Fordham University same, same another Jesuit/Masonic/Illuminati University. See these are suppose to be Catholic Universities so why are these people so PRO-ABORTION. Are they Illuminati puppets?
Reply |StRFebruary 21, 2013 - 3:37 pm
Michael Bloomberg ------ from Wikipedia...Sexual harassment controversies Bloomberg has previously been accused of sexually harassing women under his employment, which he has denied.[33][34] In 1997 a former Bloomberg L.P. employee filed a lawsuit accusing Bloomberg of having responded to her announcement to him that she was pregnant in 1995 by saying, "Kill it!" followed by "Great, No. 16", which she cited a reference to the number of pregnant women in the company at the time. In January 2001, as Bloomberg "began to explore the possibility of entering the mayor's race", he cited a polygraph test administrated by the FBI's former chief polygraph examiner[33]............. In December 2008, Conde Nast Portfolio published a story called "Mayor Bloomberg's Delicate Condition", which reported that in September 2007 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg's company on behalf of three women who worked on the business side, plus a group of women who worked at Bloomberg's company between 2002 and 2007. The article said the plaintiffs "now total 72, out of about 500 women who took maternity leave during that time".[35]. In August 2011 Judge Loretta A. Preska of United States District Court in Manhattan dismissed the claims and wrote that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had relied too much on anecdotes, and not on statistics, when it accused Bloomberg L.P. of discrimination. “ ‘J’accuse!’ is not enough in court,” Judge Preska wrote. “Evidence is required.” In a strongly worded ruling issued Wednesday, she said that “the law does not mandate ‘work-life balance,’ ” and that while Bloomberg L.P. “explicitly makes all-out dedication its expectation,” the company did not systematically violate the law because it did not treat women who took maternity leave differently from employees who took leaves for other reasons.[36]........THEY ALL ARE LYING ABOUT WOMENS RIGHTS.........Also see this...Salomon is another Illuminati Bank.... In 1973, Bloomberg became a general partner at Salomon Brothers, a bulge-bracket Wall Street investment bank, where he headed equity trading and, later, systems development. In 1981, Salomon Brothers was bought[15] and Bloomberg was laid off from the investment bank and given a $10 million severance package.[16] Using this money, Bloomberg went on to set up a company named Innovative Market Systems. His business plan was based on the realization that Wall Street (and the financial community generally) was willing to pay for high quality business information delivered as quickly as possible and in as many usable forms as technically possible (such as graphs of highly specific trends).[17] In 1982, Merrill Lynch became the new company's first customer, installing 22 of the company's Market Master terminals and investing $30 million in the company. The company was renamed Bloomberg L.P. in 1987.[18] By 1990, it had installed 8,000 terminals.[19] Over the years, ancillary products including Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Message, and Bloomberg Tradebook were launched.[
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