Welcome to You Op to Know, The Daily Orange Opinion section’s weekly podcast.  

This week, Assistant Editorial Editor Michael Sessa, Liberal columnist Brittany Zelada and Conservative columnist Michael Furnari discuss the implications of New York’s recently passed Reproductive Health Act.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com.

TRANSCRIPT

SESSA: Welcome to this week’s edition of You Op To Know, The Daily Orange’s Opinion podcast. I’m Michael Sessa and this week I’m joined by Liberal columnist Brittany Zelada and Conservative columnist Michael Furnari.

FURNARI: It’s my pleasure.

ZELADA: My pleasure too.

SESSA: So tonight we’re going to talk about the recently passed Reproductive Health Act. So the act passed the state legislature on the anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, and the act does three main things: It makes abortions legal at any time when necessary to protect a woman’s health or safety, it allows medical professionals who aren’t doctors to perform abortions and it repeals criminal penalties for harming unborn children. Alright. So Brittany, you wrote a column supporting the act, so why do you support the changes?

ZELADA: Well, the RHA basically is a reproductive health accessibility law which provides access to legal and safe abortion for women who need it, and, as well, it ties in with more access to contraception. And it decriminalizes abortion under the New York state penal act.

SESSA: So opponents of the RHA have also been pretty outspoken. And they’ve cited a few concerns with the ethicality of later-term abortions, and also having medical professionals who aren’t doctors perform abortions. So do you think those concerns are valid, Michael?

FURNARI: Yeah, I do. One of things you mentioned earlier was that it removes abortion from the penal code entirely, in New York state at least. And I think that’s kind of, that’s the big thing that, that kind of bothers me about it, is that there’s something very, kind of, almost sterile about the whole thing, and it’s like as if, as if abortion is, you know, like a mammogram or like some kind of health checkup, like it’s, it’s just a health procedure as opposed to something that’s a little more, kind of, deep than that, and a little more important, and something that’s, you know, it’s part of the way we determine which human life matters and doesn’t, so it’s, as opposed to it being something of, kind of like real, serious, cosmic importance really, it almost turns abortion into, like, you know, like a health checkup. And that’s the thing that I think I kind of object to with the RHA.

SESSA: Do you think any of the concerns from opponents are valid, or there’s room for any compromise?

ZELADA: I do see where the opponents, like, stand with, in regards to abortion being practiced by non medical, licensed physicians. It moves toward midwives and nurses and physician’s assistants. And I feel like those are valid. But at the same time, in researching and interviewing Dawn Gresham, who is the health policy analyst for Senator Liz Krueger, who was the main senator to pass this bill, the New York scope of practice for nurses and medical assistants, in essence, their scope of practice is actually, binds them qualified to perform abortion. And I don’t really agree with your stance on abortion being seen as, it shouldn’t be seen as a medical access or medical procedure. I think it’s very well, it should be very well seen as a medical procedure because, basically, women’s pregnancies are very sensitive. It could be very normal, and it could be happy go lucky, and she’s gonna have the baby. But then environmental factors and, whatever they may be, which, you know, they can multiply with a pregnancy, it can make a pregnancy very high risk, and it could make the fetus unviable and possibly put the women’s life at risk, which, given the statistics in America, they’re not looking so great with maternity mortality rates and morbidity rates. So we’re the only developed country that has those high rates, so, that’s comparable to third world countries. So that’s a little bit shocking.

FURNARI: We’re also one of the only developed countries that allows late-term abortion, so, it sort of cuts both ways.

SESSA: Do you think there’s — since it’s such a polarized topic politically — that there’s aspects of the debate that both political ends might be able to compromise on, or do you think it’s just an issue that’s harder to overcome?

FURNARI: I wish I could tell you yes, like I really do. But, I mean, the way that we’ve kind of hashed this one out politically, is that, like we’re going to, kind of, it seems like, at least, it’s going to be solved through the supreme court. Like, any time legislation gets brought up, and you saw this with the bill Ben Sasse tried to bring to the floor a few days ago, anytime that you try to really make a legislative solution for this, it doesn’t really seem to work. It seems like it’s going to be decided through the supreme courts, and that’s not exactly a middle ground kind of solution.

ZELADA: Well, I did do my research about the Louisiana bill, and in essence, it’s being halted right now, and, I feel like with similar bills that are passed, like the one that was trying to be passed a few days ago, with Texas, it kind of limits the accessibility of health care, health care, sorry, health care clinics, for those who need it. And I feel like what people overlook is the racial disparities of minority women in American healthcare.

SESSA: Interesting points on both sides. Thanks for joining us. As always, if you have any comments, questions, concerns, or you want to contribute to the discussion, you can send us a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com. And, as always, check the podcast and the video. We’ll see you next week!

Published on February 11, 2019 at 8:09 pm

Contact Michael: msessa@syr.edu | @MichaelSessa3