New York Democrats OK abortion, trafficking bill split

NEW YORK—After two years of delays, the New York legislature passed an anti-trafficking measure and sent it to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Assembly Democrats held up the bill, insisting on tying it to a measure that would have legalized abortion at any time for the life or health of the mother and removed criminal penalties associated with botched abortions.

As a standalone bill, the anti-trafficking measure passed the Assembly unanimously. The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, herself a victim of sexual assault, called the political process, “a long and arduous journey.”

“It’s a shame that it didn’t pass a few years ago,” said Republican Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin.

The insistence on including the abortion provision came chiefly from Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who resigned his leadership post at the beginning of the year after federal prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of corruption related to his millions in outside income. Silver remains in office but no longer runs the Assembly, where he exerted tight control over what bills came to the floor.

The anti-trafficking measure and the abortion measure were two parts of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act (WEA). All of the measures except the abortion measure passed by a wide majority in the state Senate, but the Assembly had refused to vote on the measures separately. Abortion advocates like NARAL Pro-Choice New York lobbied legislators to keep the abortion provision tied to the other uncontroversial provisions.

Pro-life groups working in Albany supported the other nine parts of the WEA, which included measures against sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination in the workplace.

The new Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, was willing to allow the women’s bills to pass without the unpopular abortion measure. The makeup of the tightly divided state Senate has also changed since the last legislative session, when Senate Republicans and two Democrats tabled the abortion provision by only one vote. Now Senate Republicans hold a full majority and a more secure blockade against the abortion measure.

The Trafficking Victims Protection and Justice Act raises criminal penalties for sex and labor trafficking. Before, the state criminal code classified sex trafficking as a nonviolent felony.

The bill raises the penalty for a john patronizing a trafficked minor to a felony sex offense, in line with statutory rape. In the United States, victims are brought into the commercial sex world on average between the ages of 12 and 14, according to the Polaris Project.

Victims may also now bring civil suits against their traffickers. The bill also establishes policies for state police to receive education for identifying victims and connecting them to needed services. Usually outside nonprofits, not government agencies, work with victims coming out of sex trafficking. Christian groups fighting sex trafficking in New York, like Restore NYC, supported the legislation.

The state Senate has already passed the nine WEA measures again this session, so this measure will go directly to the governor to be signed into law. Cuomo, who urged the legislature to pass all 10 measures as one package before, is now open to signing the measures separately.

Paulin, the Democratic sponsor of the anti-trafficking bill, supported the abortion measure, but has for many months urged her colleagues to stop playing politics and vote on the measures separately.

“I am not willing to allow the Senate’s unfortunate failure to support the entire act to also doom this needed anti-trafficking bill,” Paulin wrote in an editorial last year. “To do so is to say that we put our political needs ahead of the needs of trafficking victims who deserve our support. We cannot sacrifice the safety of countless young men and women who are being bought and sold, raped and tortured, on a daily basis. Let’s at least pass the part we all agree on. If that does not fit the political agenda of some people, then so be it.”

The battle in New York came to an end as a battle over a federal anti-trafficking bill in Washington, D.C., began. Congressional Democrats have halted the measure over the abortion issue. An anti-trafficking bill passed unanimously out of committee, but Senate Democrats held up the legislation because of its provision underlining the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion. The bill creates a fund for victims from federal fines paid by traffickers, and the bill outlines that the Hyde Amendment would apply to that fund. Democrats object, but today even The Washington Post editorial board called on the Senate to pass the bill in a piece titled, “Remember the children.”