“This is absolutely reprehensible and dangerous.” Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine? Violence on the subways and streets of New York City? The extreme laws in New York State — worse than Roe itself — that pressure girls into having but one choice? No, Empire State governor Kathy Hochul was reacting to the news last week that Florida’s senate had passed legislation to protect unborn babies after the 15-week mark in a pregnancy. How dare they move to protect the innocent voiceless unborn!
This is absolutely reprehensible and dangerous.
In New York, we will always protect access to safe reproductive health care. https://t.co/Sk31M67Toa
— Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) March 4, 2022
I’ve wondered before and I wonder again: Is New York pro-choice or pro-abortion? Hochul’s consistent returning to the topic, when it is not under threat in the abortion capital of the country, suggests the latter.
If you check her personal Twitter account, you’ll see frequent mentions of her support for abortion.
As reproductive rights come under attack across the nation, we need to secure access to safe, legal abortions.
As governor, I will always fight for this constitutional right.
— Kathy Hochul (@KathyHochul) March 4, 2022
In New York, we will never let Republicans turn back the clock on reproductive rights.
— Kathy Hochul (@KathyHochul) February 28, 2022
She also took to Twitter to be cheerleader for Joe Biden’s State of the Union shoutout to abortion, retweeting this:
The constitutional right affirmed in Roe v. Wade — standing precedent for half a century — is under attack as never before.
If we want to go forward — not backward — we must protect access to health care. Preserve a woman’s right to choose.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2022
New York’s Cardinal Dolan has said on occasion that today’s abortion activists seems to prefer abortion. Hochul’s enthusiasm for it certainly suggests as much.
Andrew Cuomo was an extremist on abortion, but I kinda understand why. Men who behave badly toward women would likely find abortion useful. But for a mother to be so adamantly eager for you to know that under her watch New York is an abortion destination? That’s gruesome. Just days after the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attack, she went to a statue of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman to encourage pregnant women in Texas to come to NY for their abortions — Lady Liberty will embrace you.
The next month she went up to Seneca Falls with her daughter and said:
But for me this is personal. This is very personal because I’m also joined by a young woman. Come on up here, Katie. This is the young woman, my daughter Katie Hochul, who I will continue to fight for her rights as long as I can take a breath and then she will carry on the fight for her children and her grandchildren. That’s what we’re doing because we are sharing the torch today and someday I’ll be passing the torch to all the young women, the torch that is in my hands from the women of Seneca Falls.
. . .
So yes, get your damn hands off our bodies because we are sick and tired of being sick and tired, as Fannie Lou Hamer famously said a long time ago. She said, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I know we’ve got the fighting spirit in us. We love to do this. We like a good fight. Let’s get that out there. But the fight that my mother had to fight when she was young, the fight that I fought when I was younger should not be a fight that Katie in her thirties fights today for reproductive health.
. . .
New Yorkers will continue to lead the way just like in 1917 we were three years ahead of the rest of the nation in earning the right to vote for women. In 1970 we were three years ahead of the nation in ensuring reproductive health rights right here in the State of New York. And in 2021 we are laying down the gauntlet once again – if you are in a state where oppression is the law of the land, you come to New York and just like we have Lady Liberty at our Harbor who stood there since 1886 saying, send me those who’ve been oppressed, you will find a safe harbor in our state. We offer a safe harbor now today in 2021 and forward to the women across this nation.
Fifty-eight percent of reproductive age women are living in states where their rights are under assault. You come to New York and you’ll be part of our family. We’ll take care of you, make sure you have the health care you deserve. You come right here. And I see a sign from someone from Texas right now. You’re from Texas? You are part of the New York family starting right here right now.
She’ll only meet her grandchildren if her daughter decides the time is right. Otherwise, to pretend that a child is not a child is what her mother has been saying is health care.
It’s clearly lost on her that the leading suffragettes were against abortion. Or that Harriet Tubman might be bothered that more black babies are aborted in New York City than born. Black lives matter, unless abortion activists consider them an inconvenience. But that’s, of course, a tradition that goes back to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
Kathy Hochul does seem to cherish being the first female governor of New York. And that could make all the difference if she wanted to be a different kind of leader. Women know better. They know what a gift motherhood is and should fight so that no girl or woman ever has to make that deadly choice — one that ends the life of her child and changes her forever. Women deserve better than abortion, and if women in politics would lead the way, what a more tender culture we would have. Abortion is the most intimate violence —severing the bond between a mother and her child — and poisons everything.
Hochul went to law school at The Catholic University of America. I suspect she never read this from a letter to women issued at the end of the Second Vatican Council — and reissued by Pope Benedict in 2012 — but it would mean a different kind of leadership from women when it comes to abortion, if taken seriously:
the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.
. . .
Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world.
We could use a motherly touch in politics and culture today. Instead, women like Hochul insist on politics that continue to give men the power to behave badly. If abortion is law and health care, why should he rise to the occasion of fatherhood?