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New York State legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, with a Republican governor, a Republican state Senate and a Republican Assembly passing the legislation. More than a half century later, most New Yorkers support abortion rights and we think that if offered the opportunity to explicitly put abortion rights in the state Constitution, they would certainly pass it.
Yet the Legislature, in crafting an amendment to the state Constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court wrongly overturned Roe two years ago with its terrible Dobbs decision, is proposing an amendment using only terms such as “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive health care and autonomy.”
The amendment doesn’t use the word “abortion,” so neither should the ballot question. The bipartisan state Board of Elections prepared language that mirrors the amendment, yet there’s a lawsuit before Acting Albany state Supreme Court Justice David Weinstein asking him to add the word “abortion” to the ballot.
Weinstein should decline. The ballot question should summarize the amendment, as it does now.
Compare this with what happened post-Dobbs in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio in 2022 and 2023. In each state, explicit abortion protections were approved by the public to be added to the state constitution with the word “abortion” or explicit abortion restrictions or limitations (again, with the word “abortion”) were rejected by the public. In every instance, the protections and the bans, the word “abortion” was used.
And in every case, the pro-choice position prevailed, with constitutional protections approved in California, Michigan and Ohio and constitutional bans rejected in Kansas and Kentucky.
This year, Florida, South Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and Missouri all have voters considering abortion protection for their constitutions. Another, in Arkansas was knocked off the ballot and decisions on ballot status are still pending on amendments in Montana and Nebraska. Nebraska also has a possible amendment to ban abortion. And, once again, every single one of the constitutional measures has the word “abortion.” And all the ballots in those states reflect that.
Albany could have added the A-word to the Constitution. They probably should have. They maybe could have even instructed the state Board of Elections to use the word “abortion” on the ballot. But they didn’t. We don’t know why they made the amendment vague, unlike in every other state.
But what we know is that it is not the role of the Board of Elections to interpret what a constitutional amendment means. That is for the highest court in New York, the Court of Appeals, after the people approve an amendment.
Some lawmakers who support the amendment say that they intended the verbiage to indicate abortion. We take them at their word, but they should have written that into the amendment, as happened in all those other states. The voters aren’t dumb. As was shown in every state, voters made clearly pro-choice decisions when given the choice.
Why didn’t the Legislature act straightforwardly when they had the chance?
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