Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout, who is now officially on the ballot to run against New York governor Andrew Cuomo, recently wrote she was “deeply committed to securing far-reaching rights for women and to safeguarding New York women against the anti-abortion tide sweeping the country.”
Teachout seems to be attempting to run to the left of the very liberal Cuomo.
Writing in the Albany Times Union, where she is identified as a “Fordham University associate law professor” she wrote:
Abortion rights across the United States are under assault. Louisiana recently signed a bill to close three of the state’s five abortion clinics. A new law in Texas could leave it with only six clinics by this fall. Alabama, Mississippi and other states in the south have also dramatically reduced women’s access to abortion.
The second reason is that the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing private interests the license to override federal laws, which makes state policy even more paramount. In its Hobby Lobby decision in June, for example, the court empowered corporations to reject on religious grounds the birth control mandate required by Obamacare. We’re still waiting to see the full scope of how this plays out — but what’s clear is the court has created a huge opening for employers and private parties to evade federal protections for women’s rights.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he champions the full 10-point plan, but he has obstructed the circumstances that would realize it, by actively promoting Republican control of the Senate. In light of this, his recent move to create a Women’s Equality Party can only be interpreted as either a hollow gesture or crass political ploy. If Gov. Cuomo truly cared about women’s equality, he would have found a way to secure passage of the 10-point plan.
I am deeply committed to securing far-reaching rights for women and to safeguarding New York women against the anti-abortion tide sweeping the country.
One my first political acts was in 1989, when I took a middle-of-the-night Greyhound bus from the White River Junction in Vermont to Washington, D.C. to join half a million women in the March for Women’s Lives.
I’ve been rallying for women ever since.
In light of a national attack on abortion and the court’s expansion of corporate religious rights, New York must pass the full 10-point Women’s Equality Act. We shouldn’t settle for anything less.
Teachout’s public candidacy is a black eye on the already bruised and battered Catholic identity of Fordham’s Catholic identity.
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