Montgomery clashes with other legislators over state law

By Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong

Putnam County’s meeting room turned into a crowded debate chamber Monday (March 18) as residents clashed with legislators and each other over a new state law dealing with abortion and Legislator Nancy Montgomery (D-Philipstown) defied her colleagues by defending it.

Despite Montgomery’s pleas, two of the three members of the Legislature’s Health Committee, Amy Sayegh (R-Mahopac) and Toni Addonizio (R-Kent), approved a draft resolution that blasts the Reproductive Health Act for “essentially authorizing infanticide.”

William Gouldman (R-Putnam Valley) the remaining committee member, abstained, without explanation. The committee vote sends the draft to the full Legislature for consideration at its next formal monthly meeting, on April 2. Montgomery is the sole Democrat on the nine-member Legislature.

Linda Cochrane of the Hopeline Pregnancy Resource Center held up a plastic fetus during her statement in support of a resolution condemning a new state law. (Photo by Ross Corsair)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the RHA into law in January after it passed the state Senate and Assembly. It revises the state criminal code, which had allowed someone who attacked a pregnant woman to be charged with criminal abortion, akin to homicide, if the assault killed the fetus after 24 weeks’ gestation. With the change, “homicide” in the criminal code refers specifically to a “human being who has been born and is alive.”

The law also allows licensed and certified health care practitioners — not just doctors — to perform abortions and eliminates a requirement that a second doctor monitor an abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation or later in case it results in the birth of a child who would die without immediate medical care.

Drafted by Robert Firriolo, the Putnam Legislature’s lawyer, the proposed resolution asks the state to repeal the RHA. The resolution claims that the RHA will make abortion more common but less safe; that allowing a late-term abortion to safeguard the woman’s health — not just her life — means a pregnancy can be terminated for almost any reason, including travel; and that removing abortion from the criminal code could “allow violent criminal acts to go unpunished.”

“Our life begins when our hearts start beating,” argued Addonizio, who chairs the committee. “Many people agree that abortion shouldn’t be allowed to stop a beating heart.” She acknowledged a county legislature “can’t reverse” the RHA, but said it can express its opposition.

“It’s important to have our voices heard,” added Legislator Ginny Nacerino (R-Patterson), who sponsored the resolution. She recalled Catholic cardinals’ pledges to aid women with unplanned pregnancies and asserted that for Cuomo “to codify this legislation while proclaiming himself a Catholic is a travesty.”

Denouncing the RHA, she cited her belief that “the majority of Putnam County residents stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me on this. I cannot comprehend any rationale justifying this diabolical legislation. It is an atrocity to mankind.”

Legislator Nancy Montgomery critiques the draft anti-abortion resolution during a committee meeting on March 18. (Photo by L.S. Armstrong)

Like Nacerino, other legislators not on the Health, Social, Educational & Environmental Committee attended its meeting and informally endorsed the draft resolution.

The committee heard from two invited witnesses. The first, Linda Cochrane, the CEO of the Connecticut-based Hopeline Pregnancy Resource Center, testified that “I have seen women choose abortion for 24-week healthy, viable babies” despite alternatives. The second, Pastor Andrew Columbia of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church, a retired New York City police officer, asserted that women often suffer ongoing trauma after abortions.

In response to Nacerino’s comments and the witnesses, audience members, including Kathleen Foley, a resident of Cold Spring, accused the committee of religious evangelism or of only hearing witnesses whose views reflect its own.

“I find it distressing we’re quoting Catholic bishops,” Foley said. As legislators, “you have a responsibility to separate your personal beliefs” from county business. “You’re proselytizing at a public meeting,” she complained. “If you pass this, don’t do it in my name.”

Nacerino responded that voters “entrust us to vote the way we think, to the best of our ability.”

The committee heard remarks at length from the audience, which seemed equally split between RHA opponents and supporters.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signs Reproductive Health Act on Jan. 22 during a ceremony at the State Capitol (Governor’s Office photo)

Tara Vamos, who also lives in Cold Spring, said good medical service involves birth control. “If you’d like to see less abortion in Putnam County, please put more resources” into multi-faceted reproductive health initiatives, she said.

Similarly, Montgomery said that allowing non-physicians to perform abortions helps women in rural communities get medical care.

“As lawmakers, we are charged to support our people,” she said. “For this Legislature, which has done nothing to provide service for reproductive health care, to be proposing this” resolution is troubling, she continued. “Access to reproductive health care,” even to obtain a birth control prescription, is “hard to find. There’s not one clinic in Putnam County.”

Sayegh shot back that “I shop at Macy’s, and there’s no Macy’s in Putnam County.”

Montgomery also emphasized that “any infant born alive is a person; therefore … they’re protected. Any propaganda saying we’re committing infanticide is just wrong. It is cruel and wrong. I ask that before we send this [resolution] to Albany, we really consider what we’re saying and get it right.”

Joseph Castellano (R-Mahopac), who chairs the Legislature, said critics “have from now until April 2 to rally people who agree with you.”

Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Armstrong was the founding news editor of The Current (then known as Philipstown.info) in 2010 and later a senior correspondent and contributing editor for the paper. She worked earlier in Washington as a White House correspondent and national affairs reporter and assistant news editor for daily international news services. Location: Cold Spring. Languages: English. Areas of expertise: Politics and government

3 replies on “Anti-Abortion Draft Ignites Debate at Putnam Legislature”

  1. I am wondering how Legislator Nacerino determined that the majority of Putnam County residents stand “shoulder to shoulder” with her on her resolution in opposition to the Reproductive Health Act. Did she conduct polling or is she engaging in alternate fact creation?

    The majority of Americans support a woman’s right to make her own decisions when it comes to her body. That’s a fact established over many years and countless polls. Voting the way “one thinks” represents only one limited opinion. Officials are elected to enact the will of people. I, for one, would rather the Legislature spend its valuable time on matters that will have a positive impact on the lives of Putnam residents. This resolution is certainly not the work that the people sent Legislator Nacerino to do.

    Shea is the Philipstown supervisor.

  2. I attended the March 18 meeting in which the Health Committee, chaired by Legislator Toni Addonizio, tried to rush approval of the resolution seeking repeal of the Reproductive Health Act. The legislators were clearly not pleased to hear opposing opinions. Legislator Amy Sayegh was dismissive, as was Legislator Addonizio. Legislator Ginny Nacerino got angry when I tried to speak and identified myself as being from Cold Spring. “They’re all from Cold Spring!” she snapped.

    To clarify, Kathleen Foley of Cold Spring accused the second “expert” speaker, a retired policeman turned pastor, of prose-lytizing (which he did), not the Legislature or the committee. The best quote was from Legislator Nancy Montgomery, who represents Philipstown, saying that she was offended that the authors of the resolution accused the hundreds of people in the state Legislature who voted for the RHA of “authorizing infanticide.”

    Several audience members made thoughtful speeches, Tara Vamos of Cold Spring among them. But in spite of well-reasoned arguments and passionate statements from audience members, the three-member committee voted to “move it forward” to the full Legislature on April 2.

    Legislator Joseph Castellano’s invitation to call and write our legislators struck me as pro forma and not a sincere promise to consider other viewpoints. I am not comfortable with a Legislature that so cavalierly ignores the wishes of its constituents to pursue the personal agendas of its members. There was one positive note, though: Montgomery made a cogent point-by-point rebuttal of the deeply flawed resolution, to represent constituents whose opinions were otherwise unsought by the committee. Kudos to our District 1 legislator.

  3. With the invention of the ultrasound — the “window into the womb” — and other scientific documentation depicting the miracle of human life, I don’t understand how anyone could advocate abortion. People have the right to make choices that affect them; however, when that choice adversely affects another person, it is no longer a good option.

    Women can choose to abstain from sexual activity if they do not want to get pregnant. Even married women can learn the natural family planning method to avoid pregnancy. Those who advocate abortion in the name of “reproductive health” need to remember some basic science: If a woman has sex and becomes pregnant, she is in optimal health and her body is work-ing perfectly!

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