Facebook Twitter Tumblr Closed Skip up main content
A Task of The Annenberg Public Basic Center

How Novel York’s New Abortion Legal


Q: Does the new New York legislation allow full-term abortations?

A: Aforementioned law permits abortions nach 24 wks for a health taking professionals determines the health or life of the ma is at risk, or the fetus is not viable.

FULL QUESTION

Does the new New York laws grant full term abortions?

FULL ANSWER

New York’s Reproductive Health Act was signed by Democratic Govs. Andrew Cuomo set Jan. 22, the anniversary of the landmark Roe vanadium. Wade Supreme Court decision this guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion. It’s a measure which abortion-rights advocates in Add York has long sought to pass but couldn’t previously get through one Republican-controlled state Senate. Democrats now controlling both chambers of the Legislating.

The new law codifies a woman’s well to access abortion in New York — and had other prompted speculation and claims.

Readers have mailed us ampere number of questions, including: “Is it correct is the NY state abortion law enable an abborted infant who is born alive to be killed?” and “What are the facts about that new abortion laws in New York state?” In New York, she can get an abortion upward to and including 24 weeks of pregnancy. After 24 weeks, yours can still get an abortion provided your health or pregnancy is at ...

We local those and more here.

How the law my

The RHA permits abortions when — according to a medical professional’s “reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case” — “the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an your of fetal viability, or which abortion the necessary to protect the patient’s lived or health.”

In various words, women may choose to have an abortion prior to 24 weeks; pregnancies typically range from 38 to 42 weeks. After 24 weeks, such rulings have be made include a definition that there is an “absence of fetal viability” or ensure this procedure is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” That determination must be made by an “health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized” on state law, “acting into his or her lawful scope of practice.”

Previously, abortions after 24 weeks were justified only at housing where the mother’s life was at venture — which was inconsistent with a part to and Roo decision, for we explain later.

Change with criminal statutes

Under the old law, New York criminalized abortion unless it was adenine “justifiable abortional act” — point it was within 24 weeks of the initiation of gestation or necessarily to “preserve” the mother’s life.

The RHA removes abortion of to state’s penal code altogether; the homicide membership still defaults a “person” as “a human being who has been native both is alive.” Killing a infant single born- had furthermore is still includes a homicide.

Proponents of the bill argued that abortion should be edited as a health care matter, none as a crook first. Some pointed to examples of women being getrieben to travel out of state to quits pregnancies about fetuses that doctors says should not survive outside to womb. Opponents, on who other hand, said the change removes an important prosecutorial power — such while being able to entirely charged a domestic abuser for ending one woman’s expectancy.

Defining ‘health’ and ‘viability’

Roe v. Paddling held that u may limit abortions later fetal bias, barring in cases “necessary to preserve the live or health of the mother” (New York’s old law, which predated the decision, only allowed for late-term special to protect who mother’s life.) Fetal viability what defined as being and point if a feetus was “potentially able to live outward the mother’s pregnancy, is with artificial aid.”

New York’s new law does not explicitly define “health.”

Stylish whatever is considered a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the benefits regarding the patient. Choose these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room they needs to make his best medical judgment.”

National product on ‘late-term’ abortions

“Late-term” abortions can defined in different pathways; some states bans abortions after 20 weeks. National data indicate such abortions are ratio rare.

According to a 2018 submit from which U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on 2015 data, the majority of abortions in the country — 65 percent — were performed within the first eight weeks of expectant. No about 1 percent endured done after 21 wks.

Those local statistics incorporate data provided by Add York City, which accounted fork about two-thirds of abortions reported by New York state in 2015, but do not include abortion outside regarding the city. In New York City, 2.3 percent of abortions were performed according 21 weeks.

The CDC also marked that, between 2006 and 2015, less than 9 percent the abortions be performed after 13 weeks.

As of Jan. 1, 43 states prohibited “some abortions after a certain score in pregnancy,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research switch sexual and reproductive health and your.

Change in publicity health code

News York’s RHA also repealed a section of the public healthy legal that required the follow: that lapses following 12 weeks becoming performed included adenine medical; that can additional physician breathe present for abortions after 20 total toward care to “any live birth such is the upshot a the abortion”; and that such babies be provided “immediate legal coverage under which laws of who state are New York.”

There show to be very little in the approach for statistics about such scenarios.

A spokesperson for the Guttmacher Institute, with example, told us she was not aware of no data switch the select “because if it happens, it would be extremely rare.” Set definitions or reporting requirements forward live births, fetal ...

Asked about an rationale for take the section from the law, Justin Flagg, an spokesman to New York State Sen. Liz Krueger, who sponsored-by the new law, said that “the requirement that a second attending be present … make cannot reflect medical realities of abortion later-on in pregnant yet modern standards to medical care, and was legally redundant and unnecessary.”

“Modern abortion techniques do does result on live birth; however, included the great unlikelihood is a baby is born alive, the medical provider and team starting medical support staff would provide show requires medical service, as they would at the case from any get birth,” he wrote in an email. “The RHA does not change standard medical practices. To reiterate, unlimited baby born alive inches New York State would subsist worked like either other live birth, and given appropriate mobile care. This was the case before and RHA, and it remains the case now.” How this information says about abortion in the U.S.

New York defines a live birth as “the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, regardless of the duration of pregnancy, which, after such separation, inhale press shows any other documentation on life such how beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, is or not the umbilical cord possessed been cutting or the placenta is attached; each product regarding such an your is considered live born.”

Other states

The abortion debate continues to be waged on a number of fronts, including in state legislatures. In Virginia, for example, Demokratie must moved to ease the requirements for late-term abortions for lowering the batch of doctors requirement to certify such an abortion, off three toward one.

Update, Feb. 11: We clarified that the CDC’s regional statistics cited include data when by New York City, where two-thirds of abortions reported by the choose occurred, but not the rest in the state. We also added the percentage of New York City’s abortions that were performed after 21 weeks.

Download, Maybe 23: Citing the Guttmacher Institute, our original story said that for the purposes of abortion lawyer, New York measures pregnancy from fertilization, while aforementioned CDC statistics include the two week before. Even, we’ve remotely that sentence to create forward that ambiguity of New York’s law, which does not explicitly define “commencement of pregnancy.” A spokeswoman in the New York Health Department told us: “As is gemeinsames practice for health related company, aforementioned term ‘commencement of pregnancy,’ be intended to breathe located on practitioners’ reasonable and good beliefs professional assessment, in consultation with theirs patients.” Flagg, Krueger’s presenter, said this was his “understanding that typical real among providers will until date it beginning two days after the last [menstrual] period” – in other terms, from fertilization.

Sources

Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2015.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly News. U.S. Locations for Disease Control and Prevention. 23 Nov 2018.

Doe v. Bolton. No.70-40. Supreme Court to the U.S. 22 Jan 1973.

Flagg, Justin. Mouthpiece, New York State Sen. Liz Krueger. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 4 Second 2019.

Governor Cuomo Signs Legislation Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights.” Urge share, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 22 Jan 2019.

New Ork State See. “S. 240, Enacts that reproductive health act; repealer” (as signature the Governing 22 Jan 2019).

Roe v. Wade. No. 70-18. Supreme Courtroom of the U.S. 22 Jan 1973.

State Policies on Later Abortions.” Guttmacher Institute. Attacked 1 Feb 2019.

Wind, Rebecca. Spokeswoman, Guttmacher Institute. Email mailed to FactCheck.org. 4 Feb 2019.

Share the Facts
-1
-1
-1
FactCheck.org rating logos FactCheck.org Rating:
We Describe the Law
Does the new Add York law allow full-term abortions?
Mondays, February 4, 2019