Ah, New York. It's nice to see that at least some state-level politicians are treating the Supreme Court's unfortunate Gonzales vs. Carhart decision as a wake-up call on women's reproductive rights, rather than an engraved invitation to introduce all kinds of paternalistic malarkey at the state level (forced Ultrasound, anyone?). Last Wednesday, NY governor Eliot Spitzer took a step in the right direction when he announced plans to introduce the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act in the NY state legislature, a bill that would strengthen the state's antiquated abortion and contraception laws on a number of fronts. Specifically, the bill would:

• Include "affirmative statement that enshrines a woman's fundamental right to control her own reproductive health" in New York law.
• Bring the NY state abortion legislation into better alignment with Roe v. Wade, ensuring that pregnant women have a right to safe abortion without exception prior to fetal viability, and have a right to safe abortion if their lives or health are in danger throughout their pregnancies.
• Ensure the continuation of public funding for reproductive health services.
• Remove New York's reproductive choice statutes from its homicide laws.
• Codify the existing federal right to contraception in New York law, and "repeal an archaic and unconstitutional New York statute that criminalizes, among other things, providing non-prescription contraception to minors."

At a time when Supreme Court justices and state-level lawmakers (enthusiastically joined by sanctimonious abortion apologist/expert on women's lives William Saletan) seem to be competing in the patriarchy sweepstakes with increasingly creative efforts to save women from themselves, I am particularly psyched about how Spitzer chose to position the legislation at a recent NARAL event. Hear him:

A woman's decision about where and when to bear a child is fundamentally a personal decision. And to the extent that it is a health care decision, it is one that should be made between a woman and her doctor. Like any health care decision, it must be informed by the morals and values of the individual, and the empirical truths of science and medicine.

So simple, yet so rarely springing from the mouths of our political leaders.

Anti-abortion activists reacted predictably to Spitzer's announcement (per the NYT)—for NY State Right to Life Committee spokesman Lori Kehoe, the new legislation was definitive proof that Spitzer is "a bully with an insatiable appetite and tunnel vision to accomplish his fierce agenda" (which would make you and your ilk…?). Meanwhile, a spokesman for Republican NY Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno scoffed at Spitzer for prioritizing such inconsequential issues as women's health, gay people's civil rights, and campaign finance reform—especially at a time when Republicans are busy focusing on big, important, manly issues like "dealing with the state's economy, jobs, reducing taxes and making sure cops don't get killed when they're on the job." Since obviously if you think women deserve to make their own reproductive decisions and gay people deserve to have equal rights, you MUST be too busy swirling your Chardonnay to care if police are murdered!

Well, whatever its detractors say, and whatever happens in the legislature, as a former and future New Yorker, I am pleased as punch. New York has, after all, always been a pioneer in the struggle to ensure women's reproductive rights, even in an era when the rest of the country was content to look the other way while thousands of women sought unsafe, illegal abortions every year, and many died or suffered lifelong health complications as a result. For an awesome historical account of how New York's pioneering safe abortion legislation first came about (pre-Roe v. Wade), check out From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion, a documentary about the people whose brave acts of resistance built the movement for abortion legalization in the United States (full of unlikely heroes like the members of the Clergy Consultation Service and the lone ethical Republican who swung the vote in the NY State legislature, among others). Then, when you're done, if you live in New York, urge your Senator and Assembly member to support the Reproductive Health Privacy and Protection Act.