On the Nov. 5 ballot, voters will see an “Equal Rights Amendment” that is being described by its proponents as a vote for abortion rights. Similar measures have been introduced and approved in other states, and left-leaning New York will probably be latest state to support abortion with a ballot measure.
However, a blunt editorial by The New York Post warns the broad language in Proposition 1 codifies “trans rights” for minors, and even legalizes reverse discrimination, in a ballot measure that is supposedly about non-discrimination in 11 new categories.
“It’s without question,” the Post’s editors warn, “the greatest bait-and-switch in Empire State history.”
Inez Stepman, an attorney and legal analyst with Independent Women's Voice, agrees Prop 1 proponents are being deceitful when they urge voters to support abortion Nov. 5.
“To the extent that New York voters have seen anything about this at all,” she tells AFN, “they're hearing that it's, quote, 'protections for abortion and protections for LGBTQ.’”
The ballot measure’s defense of transgender issues, which naturally conflicts with women’s rights, is what caught the attention of Independent Women’s Voice and its affiliated law center. The law center supported a court appeal, filed in July, that pleaded with the New York Supreme Court to rule against state legislators who are behind the measure’s deceitful language.
“The ballot measure elevates a man’s right to enter women’s spaces and requires schools to transition children without parental say,” attorney Beth Parlato, a senior legal advisor at the law center, said at the time.
Female voters would probably approve an abortion rights measure in liberal New York, Stepman concedes, but their “yes” vote also peels away privacy rights for women and girls in locker rooms, restrooms, and on women's sports teams.
“And that's much more controversial in liberal New York,” she argues, “than the way that it's being sold."
Back in the New York Post editorial, the editors point out abortion rights “are in no way under threat” in the Democrat-dominated state. So the supposed purpose of the post-Dobbs ballot measure is not an honest one, the editors contend.
Meanwhile, the Post warns the list of “protected categories” named in the ballot measure, 11 in all, pose serious legal and moral consequences. Legal protection for “gender expression” means minors can undergo sex changes without parental permission, for example. Reverse discrimination could be upheld in courts in the name of fighting discrimination.
There are “very radical consequences” if Proposition 1 is approved, Stepman warns, “and I don't think a lot of New York voters are aware that that's what's going on with this proposal."
