in the new york state assembly on today show we will discuss the status of reproductive health in new york including the reproductive health act to do so i am joined by two esteemed guests state  and patient advocate erika christiansen senator krueger represents the upper east side she is the prime sponsor of the r h a in the state senate erica christianson is a patient advocate and co founder of the grassroots group r h a vote which focuses on educating new yorkers about the problems with current new york state abortion laws and all of our efforts to fix it thank you both for being here let so our laws are a little bit outdated and they do not include some of the protections that existed in roe the bill was actually passed interestingly enough by reply by republicans in both the assembly and the senate and a republican governor so at the time it was not a partisan issue so the bill would take the abortion laws out of the criminal code where they currently reside and put them the health code where they belong and it would also say that a person who is pregnant should have both their health and their life protected currently it is only the life of the patient that is in fact protected in addition the bill would make it clear that a patient would not have to carry a non viable fetus to term finally the bill would say you know the laws existed forty eight years ago and now we have other medical professionals who within the scope of their practice are legally licensed to perform abortion services so the bill updates our laws and make it clear that women should be able to control their own reproductive destiny we've passed it in the assembly six times now but it has not even come up for a vote in the state senate so liz can you just give us a clue about the status  of the bill in the senate and whether or not there's any prospect for the senate returning to vote on it since it is alive for the rest of this year so you are absolutely right you do pass it year after year in the assembly thank you very much debra left and the assembly members i serve in a senate that is controlled by a republican majority leader john flanagan and while you pointed out historically abortion rights and protections of women and their families not a partisan issue today in two thousand and eighteen we find ourselves in a situation where it's a very partisan issue and so while all thirty one existing democratic senators have said that they would absolutely vote in support of the bill you need thirty two members to pass a bill and john flanagan being the leader of the senate is the only one who decides what bills come up for a vote so we have two problems in the senate even if i can get that thirty second vote publicly announced democrat or republican because there's this weird situation where there's one senator who says he's both and serves with the republicans simply felder from brooklyn he has said he's a no vote there are a few republicans who say privately they'd be comes to the floor but we have to get to the floor and john flanagan determines whether or not we go back to albany before the end of two thousand and eighteen and what bills would come up on the floor and so far he has been absolutely no now it is shocking to me because this isn't a partisan issue there are women and families in every district of the state who actually are suffering because we have antiquated laws and of course we have that supreme court change hanging over our head we'll probably get to that later so disappointingly i have to tell you i find it very unlikely it would this bill will pass the senate in two thousand and eighteen on the other hand i'm much more optimistic about a different majority leader in two thousand nineteen after the november elections a different formula of senators in the state senate after november and i'm feeling much more optimistic if you ask me the question can we pass the bill in two thousand and nineteen it actually assumes that the question i was going to ask has been asked do you think that this particular bill will in fact have an impact on november elections or do you think that there are other things happening in the that will change the i think this issue is one of the issues that can have a significant impact in certain districts in november because i find when i go out and help democratic candidates who are campaigning to win senate seats and they talk about their support for the reproductive health act and what it means and that the existing senator will not come out in support of the bill or even ask for it to be voted on in the senate even if they aren't going to vote for it that public opinion is frankly initially quite shocked and then angry the public is very aware of the risks to our rights particularly under the trump administration's current executive actions and the no longer really hypothetical what happens when the supreme court gets a case that challenges our rights to roe v wade protections so people get it they see it as it's just around the corner and so the fundamental statement the states have to take care of us by passing the right laws including reproductive health laws because we can't count on washington really is translating to voters all over the state on a whole host of issues but reproductive health is clearly one of them i would say environmental issues also have people sitting up and go and what the federal government is doing what what is state what is your state doing to protect us so people more and more are asking you and me and other people running for office what are you doing to make sure that in new york state we have the rights and protections we thought we had all this time because we don't believe washington's there for us well even if we aren't on the cusp of a problem with roe v wade today there are women and families in new york who are confronted with serious problems when they have a health crisis and are pregnant so that leads me to asking you erica to explain to us a little bit about your journey in this area and what problems you face in accessing proper health care in new york state when you had a medical emergency and a pregnancy for sure and i'll try to make a very complicated situation as short concise as possible which anyone who knows pregnancy knows that can be difficult i was thirty weeks into a very complicated pregnancy when we found out that the fetus i was carrying was incompatible with life on the outside of my body  this was after you know many months of one complication after the next but we had enough hope that we wanted to keep you know seeing it through our doctors thought oh let's just keep watching and then at thirty weeks growth fell off the chart my fluid levels were very high there were a lot of serious muscular indications that kind of gave us that fetal that last bad fetal diagnosis from our doctors when we heard that the only scenario that we were looking at if i were to make it all the way to term which was not actually totally sure in my case i could have had a later miscarriage risk to my health but if i made it to term i would be giving birth to a baby who would choke for a short few minutes and then die and when we heard that you know i think my husband and i immediately thought well if there's anything we can do to prevent that outcome that's you know the course of treatment we would like to explore and that's when we found out from our doctors on the upper east side of manhattan that they would not be able to take care of us that because of the limits of the law in new york states i would have to seek care elsewhere we were of course shocked but i think in the moment when you're dealing with you know i'm a medical emergency you're just trying to solve the problem and because we are incredibly privileged on multiple levels you know we speak english as a first language we have you know higher than average reading comprehension skills we have parents who stepped in and helped us pay for medical care when at that point we realized we would have to go out of network because when you get on a plane for medical care you're probably going to be pretty far out of network and i had i had strong private insurance at the time so my mom scrambled and took thousands of dollars out of her retirement and she's about near retirement age and this was all a scramble you know we're also coordinating doctors across the country in our case i got care in colorado one of the three states who will allow patients from out of state to come in for abortion care so it took us some time to get all of the logistics together last minute flights hotels or rent you know rental car from denver to  boulder we took care of all of that as quickly as we could but that took two weeks you know you're dealing with different time zones so it was thirty two weeks before i could get on a plane and fly across the country to my pregnancy  you know i'll say going through going through an airport at that point is very difficult and very painful the doctor warns you you know if t s a tries to stop you tell them you're pregnant with twins you know so that they'll let you fly you know there's all of these injustices that you experience along the way once there i received really compassionate amazing health care from the doctors in colorado after that you know kind of in the aftermath we grapple with everything that had happened and we realized you know if we had not been able to solve this problem on our own you know what what did new york state expect us to do you know and now we know they expected us to carry that doom pregnancy you know whatever the outcome in till it reached a level where my son my life was threatened i would have they would have had to be concerned that i was dying before doctors in new york could legally step in and help me when we started to put those pieces together and you know consider all the situations where any of those privileges we had in place were not there and all of the people that are falling through the cracks you know it just became our life's mission to fix it and that's what we've been doing ever since and we've met patients from all over new york state in rural areas all across the city and these are compassionate people who very much wanted to be parents but found themselves in these really horrible you know medical situations i also want to acknowledge yes it's often in cases like mine but also due to you know the  inequities in our system and you know this this situation in our state where only doctors are able to administer abortion care this means that people are sometimes not able to get the abortions earlier that they seek and therefore you know if they're trying to find a provider especially in more rural parts of the state in that you know scrambling as they're trying to get money together you know maybe care for the children they already have sixty percent of people who get abortions are already mothers you know that pushes the line right so they might find themselves in a situation where they're really battling that that cutoff that we have because they're poor or maybe they're in an abusive situation you know also i was in a loving supportive relationship that's another privilege that not everyone has so we always want to include you know the entirety of the situation the people who are seeking later abortions and we want to support those people we don't want to further stigmatize them by you know discussing this is a criminal issue which i think at least at this table we know we can agree that it's not right is a medical procedure not a crime  percent of people believe that a woman should be in control of her own health care and that has not really changed over the years people understand that this is a crisis when people face it now that's why you started r h a vote that's right we we realized as we started to work with groups in new york and work with the both of you and try to support the best we can the amazing work you're doing at the legislative level we realized that there was sort of a vacuum of the people you know of kind of representing the people who are actually affected by these laws you can talk about it theoretically but until you hear from families like ours who have been affected  hard to put it together you know you hear a lot of you should be able to figure out abortion by twenty four weeks you know and before i was affected i admit maybe i would have entertained that idea because i couldn't you know it was theoretical to me and were trying to inject real stories and like fill that vacuum with actual stories and facts from new yorkers who have been actually affected by the law because of what erica was saying what i've learned working on this bill and working with so many  credible men and women like erica it's also because our science has changed so thirty five years ago there were not a series of tests that doctors would be able to use  twenty five thirty we mark where they would say oh something suddenly has gone very wrong since your last set of tests and now we know a b c and so the question that i get sometimes is will why aren't women just taking care of this earlier in their privacy isn't the answer is because they really wanted this pregnancy and thanks to modern medicine they're only learning that they are in a crisis of life and health for themselves and the viability of this food to feed us much later in the pregnancies which is why we have to make sure that you and i are successful in passing laws in new york state that can guarantee that medicine is there to provide the services that pregnant women need at any time during their pregnancy people weren't even knowing about that erica could find out this kind of information the thirty week mark if we talked to them twenty years ago it just wasn't realistic for us to know and now we know yes and i think that for me as a member of the l g b t q community one of the things that i think helped advance the ga movement was the fact that people came out and talked about this and so it's vitally important that we have these conversations to remove the shame the stigma there is a hash tag shout your abortion which  was started by amelia i hope i don't miss pronounce the name bo now or bano in order to give women the opportunity to be public about the fact that they've had an abortion because a very substantial percentage of women have had an abortion by the time they are forty five for a variety of reasons it may be their health it may be  pregnancy is not a risk free situation people who think that youngsters should be you know the issue of parental consent and of you know a fourteen or fifteen year old who may have been impregnated by a parent or parents boyfriend should not be in the situation of being forced to carry a pregnancy to term because there are health risks involved in pregnancy so it's about women's health and while we talk about reproductive health it is really women's health and women's ability to control their health with the health care professional instead of a legislator or somebody down the street who likes to hold a sign in front of a health clinic so it is important i think not only having this kind of conversation but for individuals who have had an abortion to be public about it many years ago there was a brochure that was put out by name raul that had stories from women about you know i've had five children my husband and i can't afford another child we weren't looking to have another child and we have five children that we can barely provide for right before we went on  era air eric and i were discussing an article that just came out from buff foreword which is a jewish newspaper and it was stories of orthodox women choosing to have abortions and in some cases being in a similar scenario to what erika went through and they're going to they're robbie's and their abuse advising them we will support you this is not a violation of jewish law and we will help you in whatever decision you make and i was personally so excited to see that article because i have had several conversations with my colleague senator felder who represents a very orthodox community in brooklyn where he said it's a violation of jewish law and i've been telling  no you are you may interpret jewish law that way but actually i am also jewish and i have had discussions with rabbis who make it very clear it's not in violation of jewish law and then he has said but orthodox jewish law and so to get an article in my hands that has the scripture of individual women coming forward as you said telling their own stories and then erica told me because she had been working with some of these women that you know they're flying to israel because they can't get the health care they need here for their life and health and then they come back and just say they had a miscarriage what are we doing to the women of the state it is outrageous that the bill you can pass year after year in the assembly is not yet passed in the senate we need everyone's help so follow the lead of error to push this issue from a vote perspective in the coming elections erica your vote so what what what kind of activities would you encourage people to engage in so that they can connect with other people in their areas or what are their suggestions to have well i mean i think it as you were sort of discussing earlier i do think this starts with story sharing you know if this issue has not affected you personally and may be you know you have never run up against the law in new york but now you know these stories are out there you know i've certainly shared more details about our story but there are so many others you know find one that speaks to you and share it tweet it put it on facebook send it to your aunt who just can't understand why anyone would need an abortion after twenty four weeks you know say well actually in some cases it's necessary and here's why i mean we have changed minds with stories so we know that it works it's very hard to you know to kind of keep shouting theoretically when someone is putting concrete information in front of you so that's one very important thing i think you can do i think you can find out where your representative stand on this issue particularly if you're on long island you know whoever represents you on long island look into it see where they stand on the reproductive health act if they don't support our bill for some reason you know maybe look into other candidates find one who does ask them talk to them about it make sure they know this is something that's important to write letters write to your local papers write off write letters to the editor and make sure you know really believe that i mean we have seen the attention around this issue radically change in the last two years so you know we see a path to the light on this one and we should all be thrilled to be a part of it on that note of the  eleanor's legacy is an organization many people may be familiar with emily's list which is national but eleanor's legacy is a new york state organization that supports pro choice democratic women  sadly we don't have a great many pro choice republicans we've lost a couple in the state assembly over the last several years some women who are wonderful colleagues from upstate  retired and the republican party has been less and less welcoming to pro choice candidate so eleanor's legacy is one place where people can go to their website and see candidates who are running there are many senate candidates this year there's a baker project which is two named after martha baker who was a wonderful activist on many many issues and it's a to an attempt to support pro choice democratic women all over the state right there doing a terrific job they have eleven democratic women running for the state senate they are all one hundred percent pro choice all of eleanor's legacy candidates that's their one l test that you are in pro choice candidate and and there do seem to be phenomenal people running for even phenomenal men running for the state senate in quite a few districts who are also pro choice i don't think any of the democratic candidates for the state senate in any district are not pro choice and as you pointed out before deborah public opinion supports our position public opinion is that we should be upholding roe v wade and we should be upholding every family's right to make their own decisions when it comes to reproduction and of course that assignment just got tougher with the trump administration gag rule which would take another whole half hour show but is also going to very quickly translate into health care providers being told not even to discuss abortion as an option for pregnant women who find themselves in difficult situations which is really i think un american so we have health care procedures that can save a life and that we will have providers of health care who are not even allowed to discuss the full range of medical options with us or risk losing any funding they get from the federal government it's appalling well it's definitely part of the attack on planned parenthood and it is also a violation of medical ethics so you're putting health care providers in this situation where they are violating the rules and tenants of their  associations and their profession so it's a in increasingly difficult time there are also organizations crisis pregnancy centers that  mislead women into thinking that they can provide them with support and yet they cannot but this has been incredibly you know the time goes so quickly and we have to wrap up and i want to thank you both for being here and for all the work you do on behalf of new yorkers and especially reproductive justice and we have a lot of work in front of us especially as we lead up to those important november elections and i am so pleased to have allies like the both of you at my side so that we can continue the fight to protect new yorkers thank you so much