Tag: abortion

Getting Roe Right

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2018 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“Democrats support the right to choose throughout the 40 weeks of pregnancy. But babies are now viable outside the womb at 22 weeks.”

David Brooks wrote that in his New York Times op-ed column last week.

That’s the argument made by the pro-life movement.

It is misleading, if not incorrect.

Roe v Wade limits a woman’s right to choose in the third trimester of a pregnancy.

An abortion can be performed if necessary to protect the life or health of the woman or if the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality.

Maryland law imposes the same limitations after a fetus is viable – in the attending doctor’s medical judgment, there is a reasonable likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the womb.

I don’t expect the pro-life movement to be accurate in its depiction of the pro-choice position.

It’s our obligation to make our position clear.

June 28 – From delivery to the neighborhoods

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2016 Legislative Diary | No Comments

My mother’s obstetrician was Dr, Alan Guttmacher. He would later become the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation.

When I first ran for the House of Delegates in 1983, I supported Medicaid funding of abortion.   One of the incumbents I defeated did not.

I was the House floor leader in 1991 when we passed the legislation making the principles of Roe v. Wade the law of Maryland.  The voters agreed, approving Senate Bill 162 on referendum, 62-38%.

Yesterday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote: “It is beyond rational belief that H. B. 2 [the Texas law at issue before the Supreme Court] could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.’”

I celebrated with Planned Parenthood at the Golden West Café’s Happy Hour in Hampden.

Then I went to the Edgewood and Hilltop 4100 neighborhood meetings.

That’s an important part of a legislator’s job as well.

March 22 – Nothing for granted, again

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2016 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I’ve given this speech before.

The topic was Medicaid funding for abortion.  My first session in 1983, I was a floor whip for the pro-choice side.

The Republicans’ amendment would deny funding if the medical justification was the woman’s mental health.

I reminded my House colleagues that the voters of Maryland approved the law protecting a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child and to make that decision after consulting with the people she chooses.

Most of them knew that.

However, most of my students do not.

When we discuss abortion in my law school classes every fall, a majority of the class does not know that Senate Bill 162 – Abortion, was approved on referendum in 1992, 62-38%.  Delegate Larry LaMotte and I were the lead sponsors of the House bill.

As I wrote yesterday about the legislative process, my students should take nothing for granted.

Choice and access, yet again

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

This may have been the 33rd time I spoke on this issue on the House floor.

The subject was abortion, specifically the circumstances when the Medicaid program will pay for the procedure.

The language in the budget bill is a compromise that was reached before I was elected in 1982.

Every year, it seems, there’s an attempt to change it.

Pro-choice members tried to broaden the language when I first got here but failed.

Not any more…

“This has nothing to do with access to abortion,” declared a supporter this morning of an amendment that would severely limit when the state would pay for an abortion.

“It has everything to do with access,” I responded.

“As Justice Ginsburg has pointed out, women of means will always be able to obtain an abortion,” I continued. “Poor women, on the other hand, must overcome obstacles to having the procedure.”

There were knowing responses on the faces of several women legislators as I spoke.

The amendment failed, 55-83.

Concurring with Justice Ginsburg

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was interviewed on MSNBC last night.

MSNBC: You’ve been a champion of reproductive freedom. How does it feel when you look across the country and you see states passing restrictions that make it inaccessible, if not technically illegal?

Ginsburg: Inaccessible to poor women. It’s not true that it’s inaccessible to women of means and that’s the crying shame. We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country. There are states – take the worst case, suppose Roe v. Wade is overruled – there will still be a number of states that will not go back to old ways.

             Maryland is one of those states.

If you’re older than 40, you’ll remember that in 1991 we passed a law adopting the holding of Roe v. Wade.  The next year, the voters approved it on referendum, 62-38%.

Consequently, if Roe is overruled, nothing will change in Maryland because that law will be on the books.

That other states did not follow our lead demonstrates how poorly organized liberals are.  Contrast that with the voter ID laws in more than a dozen red states.

I shared the Ginsburg quote with my colleagues who were the pro-choice floor leaders in 1991, as I was, (Senators Barbara Hoffman and Paula Hollinger and Delegate Larry LaMotte) and with the leading lobbyist for the bill.

“Saw the interview & it sounded like she was on the floor with us when we fought the good fight!” responded former Senator Hollinger.

“I glow with pride at what we were able to do together to secure and strengthen reproductive rights for all women in Maryland,” wrote Steven Rivelis, the lobbyist for Planned Parenthood.

For me, it’s the bill that will touch more lives than any other legislation I’ve worked on.

And I’m sending this blog to my niece, Rachel, because it’s her generation and the ones that follow that will benefit from knowing that we fought and won this good fight.

A caucus Groucho would not want to be a member of

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments
The Maryland Democratic Party’s “center-right legislators have shrunk to a handful,” writes Barry Rascovar, a former editorial writer at the Baltimore Sun.
The Republican Party faces a similar problem.
None of the three GOP legislators who voted for marriage equality is returning to Annapolis.  Two were elected to local office, Senator Alan Kittleman and Delegate Wade Kach; Del. Robert Costa has retired.
Five years ago, I introduced legislation listing the family members who are allowed to remove a deceased’s remains from a burial site and reinter them elsewhere.  An amendment to remove domestic partners from that list was supported by 32 Republicans.  Only two voted against it.
Twelve Republican members voted in 1991 for the choice legislation that the voters approved on referendum, 68-32%.
For nearly 40 years, compromise language has authorized Medicaid funding of abortions because of a woman’s mental health.  An amendment to strip that language received 48 votes in the House.  All but six of the 48 were Republicans.
No Republicans voted for the Firearm Safety Act of 2013.
I tried to find out how many GOP members of the new legislature were endorsed by the NRA, but you must belong to the NRA to view its endorsements,
As Groucho Marx would say, that’s not a club that would accept me as a member.

A principle and the principal’s office

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“The Speaker wants to see you in his office.”

A state trooper conveyed that message to me.

I was on the House floor, waiting for today’s floor session to begin.

Was I being summoned to the principal’s office?

Thankfully, not.

I had company –the leadership of the Appropriations Committee.

The State operating budget would be debated today.  Amendments had been drafted to reduce Medicaid-funded abortions.  I was asked to speak against them.

One amendment would eliminate abortions for mental health reasons; the other would prohibit third-trimester abortions.

The current language is nearly 40 years old.

When I was first here, we tried to expand the conditions when Medicaid would fund an abortion.

That effort failed.  Then we enacted the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. The voters approved the bill on referendum in 1992.

When I spoke on the floor, I read from that law, which I had asked committee counsel to provide me after the Speaker’s office meeting.

The amendments failed, 48-84 (mental health), and 54-79 (3rd trimester).

A friend and pro-choice lobbyist wrote, “Thanks as always for standing up for the right to choose this morning!”

“The right to choose means a lot to both of us,” I replied.

Someone else wrote, “What does it feel like to stand up to oppose the Medicaid abortion floor amendment for what feels like 20 straight years?”

When it means a great deal to you and you win, it still feels very good.

Standard but misleading rhetoric

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

This letter to the editor didn’t require much effort on my part.

I helped to write it more than 20 years ago.

The Sun had run an op-ed on abortion with the standard but misleading right-wing rhetoric.

Or as President Obama said of the gun lobby after the background check was defeated, “They willfully lied.”

I let the words of our law speak for themselves.

 

Dear Editors:

I write as someone who supports making reproductive choices available to all women, not as one of “those who support ‘choice’ at all costs,” one of many misleading characterizations in Marta Mossburg’s op-ed.

“Abortion is virtually available on demand throughout a pregnancy,” she asserts.

Under Maryland law, if the fetus is viable, an abortion may be performed only if “necessary to protect the life or health of the woman or if the fetus is affected by genetic defect or serious deformity or abnormality.”

“A doctor can override the requirement [for parental notification] for almost any reason,” Ms. Mossburg writes.

Our law provides that a physician may not give notice if “in the professional judgment of the physician, notice to the parent or guardian may lead to physical or emotional abuse to the minor, the minor is mature and capable of giving informed consent to an abortion; or notification would not be in the best interest of the minor.”

The people of Maryland have already passed judgment on these statutes.  They approved them by a 62-38% margin after they were petitioned to referendum in 1992.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-abortion-letter-20130509,0,1345277.story

Been there, done some of that

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

 

From the front page of today’s NYTimes

ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on

legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.

National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to

Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the

most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.

(Legislation making Roe v. Wade’s protections of a woman’s right to choose the law of Maryland  passed the General Assembly in 1991.  Senate Bill 162 was petitioned to referendum and approved by the voters, 62-38%.  I was one of the lead sponsors of the House bill.)

The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal

pay and anti-discrimination provisions.

 (The first item in my bills.2014 file)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/nyregion/cuomo-bucks-tide-with-bill-to-lift-abortion-limits.html?hp&_r=0

All the Views Fit To Print

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary | No Comments
     I have been rightly accused of introducing legislation after reading an article in the New York Times.
     Not this time.
     Tuesday morning, I wrote the Jewish Times, responding to a letter contending that Roe v. Wade would survive a Romney-Ryan administration.
      After I emailed my letter, I read the views fit to print on the editorial page of the NY Times.
      My letter and a link to “If Roe v. Wade Goes” are below.
Dear Editors:
Two words explain why the right-wing cares so much about who will fill the next vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Citizens United.
That’’s the name of the plaintiff in the decision where the court cast aside precedent to hold that there can be no limits on campaign contributions by an individual, corporation, or association.
Justice Antonin Scalia hopes that abortion is the next issue where the Court reverses itself.
The Justice does not consider Roe v. Wade binding precedent, because, in his view, it was wrong, remains controversial and is an issue better left to legislators than judges. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-usa-court-scalia-idUSBRE88H06X20120918
Despite Governor Romney’s recent efforts to move to the center on reproductive freedom, if elected, he is certain to nominate for the Court only those who meet an anti-choice litmus test.
Even if this doesn’’t result in five votes to discard Roe v. Wade, there would surely be a further erosion of a woman’’s privacy right.
In his recent letter to the editor, Dr. Morton M. Mower writes, ““I can assure you that no one is about to reverse Roe vs. Wade.””
In this instance, a subsequent opinion by the Supreme Court could render that advice woefully wrong.

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