{"id":7799,"date":"2013-05-01T13:56:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T17:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=7799"},"modified":"2013-05-01T14:02:16","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T18:02:16","slug":"cuomo-not-enough-votes-yet-for-womens-reproductive-health-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/05\/01\/cuomo-not-enough-votes-yet-for-womens-reproductive-health-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuomo: Not enough votes (yet) for Women\u2019s Reproductive Health Act"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Gov. Cuomo, delivering his State of the State address in Jan., 2013. Photo: Gov. Cuomo’s office<\/a> via Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

At a press conference today, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded to reporters that he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to pass his Women’s Reproductive Health Act. But he says he’s still trying.<\/p>\n

Reporter Karen Dewitt asked the governor about the situation, given that state Sen. Dean Skelos has said there’s “no need” to bring the bill to a vote at all<\/a>. Here’s what he said:<\/p>\n

The topic will come to a head, the women are working very hard, the women’s groups are working very hard, and it’s going to be a topic that has to be addressed.<\/p>\n

I believe it should come up for a vote\u2026first I believe we should get it done, and I also believe that people have a right to know where elected officials stand on those important issues, so I’m going to be working very hard, again, to bring it to the forefront, and to get a vote and to get it passed.<\/p>\n

I understand Sen. Skelos is opposed to it, he has been not just this year, he’s been opposed to the choice vote for many, many years. I understand that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cuomo said he’s NOT conceding defeat on this.<\/p>\n

We are working on language, it’s not a question of language, it’ a question of language that can garner enough votes to pass, right? It’s not language for the sake of language\u2026it’s a bill that can pass. And we do not yet have language for a bill where we have identified enough votes with certainty that could pass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it looks like the Women’s Reproductive Health Act for New York this year is still somewhat in doubt (here’s the original language of the Assembly bill, from January; <\/a>as you may have surmised the Senate bill language is still in process) — and this after Cuomo gave such a rousing introduction to the act in January’s State of the State message in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The act’s 10-point agenda includes (quoting from YNN’s Capitol Tonight) <\/a><\/p>\n

pay equity, curtailing sexual harassment and employment, credit and lending\u00a0discrimination, strengthening human trafficking laws, ending housing discrimination of domestic abuse victims and blocking pregnancy discrimination in the workplace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It also includes measures to strengthen the state’s abortion laws, which have been a major sticking point with Republican legislators.<\/p>\n

So it’s not clear what’s going to happen with this bill in the future, but there seems to be something of an impasse. We shall see. More on this story tomorrow morning on the 8 O’clock Hour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a press conference today, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded to reporters that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10218,5614,10559,9846,11547,10555,11549],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7801,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions\/7801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}