NY lawmakers endorse proposed abortion rights amendment

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York lawmakers took the first step Friday toward amending the state constitution to enshrine abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature approved a resolution to begin the process of passing the amendment, which would expand the state constitution’s Equal Protection Amendment by banning discrimination based on “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” “This is a massive step forward for our state while others move backwards, and an important stance against the Supreme Court’s attacks on our rights,” Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, said in a statement. New York is taking a different approach from California, where voters will decide whether to amend their constitution to add the “fundamental right to choose to bear a child or to choose and to obtain an abortion.” But Katharine Bodde, New York Civil Liberties Union assistant policy director, has said New York’s approach will hold up better in court and prohibit more kinds of discrimination against pregnant people. And New York will also add ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to the state’s Equal Protection Amendment.