NY’s faux ‘abortion amendment’ is a sneak attack on parents’ rights and free speech

By Wai Wah Chin
Opinion piece published July 28, 2024 in NY Post

New York’s so-called “Equal Protection of Law Amendment” is headed for November’s ballot after a tortuous journey through the courts.

On Friday, public comments on what will be listed as Proposition One closed, and the state Board of Elections moved to finalize its language.

But as we can expect from Democrats — remember the deceptively named federal “Inflation Reduction Act”? — this “Equal Protection” law is anything but.

The left is marketing Proposition One as critically necessary to protect abortion rights in New York after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision.

But contrary to the fear-mongering, Dobbs did not ban abortion: It merely reminded the nation that the Constitution says nothing about abortion’s legality — leaving states free to decide their own laws.

And New York state needs more abortion protection like the Sahara Desert needs more sand.

New York enshrined legal abortion statewide with bipartisan support in 1970 — three years before Roe v. Wade — and reinforced it more recently.

Those state laws are not affected by Dobbs one smidgen.

The truth is that Prop. One originated as Democratic Party red meat for the November election.

Democrats learned that Dobbs alarmism really works to drive their voter turnout, especially with affluent white female liberals.

It paid off beautifully for Gov. Hochul in New York’s surprisingly competitive 2022 gubernatorial race.

So for 2024, Democrats splattered proposals and referenda purporting to “protect abortion” on election ballots in more than half a dozen states nationwide, including New York.

Here, though, Democrats took the opportunity to range far beyond abortion paranoia.

If Prop. One were really about protecting abortion, one simple sentence would suffice: “Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion.”

That’s verbatim from the state public-health law already on the books in New York.

But this “abortion” amendment reads nothing like that straightforward sentence.

Instead, it aims to add superfluous abortion protections — while making breathtakingly sweeping changes to state anti-discrimination statutes that have nothing to do with abortion.

Prop. One’s Section A adds a whopping 11 new categories to the existing protections against discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed and religion.

Only two of them touch abortion.

But four of the new categories — sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and age — expand existing law to enshrine transgender minor “rights” in the state Constitution.

Alert parents instantly recognize these code words for what they mean in our schools right now: The left is coming after our children.

So while parents in other states can still fight on school boards and in courtrooms against boys in girls’ bathrooms, against weak boys stealing sports medals from strong girls, against manipulative in-school “acceptance and belonging” lessons and more, New York parents will be powerless if Proposition One passes.

Here, parents will have no recourse — and may actually be criminally liable for hate speech if they voice their objections.

Meanwhile, Section B is the proposition’s knock-out punch.

It says any and all of the discriminations banned in Section A are permitted if such discrimination is done to “prevent or dismantle” another discrimination.

It basically adds to the state Constitution that much-ridiculed quote from racism trafficker Ibram X. Kendi: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

The section would institute reverse discrimination in any imaginable category — just fabricate some past discriminatory grievance, and voila, discrimination to “undo it” becomes legal.

And the language is exceedingly broad, covering “any law, regulation, program, or practice” — so almost anyone in government can reverse-discriminate, unchecked and unopposable, via a “program or practice.”

Examples? The sky’s the limit.

A tax commissioner could exempt black New Yorkers from paying income taxes, as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) has suggested.

A district attorney could decide a case based not on its merits, but to correct for alleged past racial “over-prosecution” of others, along the lines of California Penal Code 745.

A schools chancellor could eliminate the city’s race-blind, meritocratic specialized high schools, which have been falsely accused of past discrimination.

Prop. One started out as a sordid electioneering ploy on abortion, then became a sleazy bait-and-switch — not about abortion, not about equal protection, but about destroying parental rights and free speech.

And to top it all, it legalizes a cornucopia of reverse discrimination.

Prop. One belongs in the trash heap of bad legislation — and in November, voters should toss it there for good.

Wai Wah Chin is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York and an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute.