Kirsten Gillibrand, Mike Sapraicone clash over Prop 1 in testy Senate debate

Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand dipped and dodged a full-on attack from her GOP challenger Mike Sapraicone over her support of Prop 1.Sapraicone challenged Gillibrand on her assertion that Prop 1 would protect abortion and equal rights for women and argued that the amendment is vaguely worded to allow boys to play women’s sports and allow young kids to undergo gender reassignment surgeries without parental permission.“It doesn’t talk about abortion.

We need to remember this is New York state.We’ve had the most expansive abortion law in the country for over 50 years.

This proposition is not changing the way abortion is.It’s only taking the rights away from parents,” Sapraicone said during one of the most heated exchanges of the Spectrum News/NY1 debate.“You’re absolutely wrong,” Gillibrand immediately fired back, pointing to states like Connecticut and New Mexico that have Equal Rights Amendments, like Prop 1 is being billed.“They have lawsuits that said you have an Equal Rights Amendment in your Constitution and you cover all male reproductive care, but not all female reproductive care like access to abortion is fundamentally unequal,” Gillibrand said.“What are equal rights when I think of my daughter, when a man can go into that locker room and say he’s a girl and he’s going to compete with them,” Sapraicone shot back.“Do you know how many examples there are in our state?  It’s less than a handful.

You are using a red herring,” Gillibrand responded.Sapraicone said he was “pro life” but would not support a national abortion ban.The two candidates also sparred over immigrationGillibrand called for “right sizing” legal immigration into the US on top of dedicating resources to clearing a backlog of asylum seekers taking advantage of the laws currently on the books.“We need a system that actually works and it’s broken right now.We need to rightsize immigration to make sure we have the right number of visas for the right number...