NYC Council candidate and Harlem pastor Al Taylor faces scrutiny for flip-flop on abortion rights
Weeks after launching his campaign for a hotly-contested City Council seat in Harlem, Assemblyman Al Taylor earlier this year cast an uncharacteristic vote to advance a state constitutional amendment prohibiting any limits on abortion in New York.
Taylor, a socially conservative pastor who as an Assembly member had previously opposed expanding abortion access, told City & State after the Jan. 25 vote that he came around to supporting the amendment because he realized he should not let his personal beliefs “overrule the right for someone else to make their own decisions.”
“I had to take my personal [belief] and sit it on the side, and say to the voters, ‘You decide. You have a right to make that decision,'” he told the outlet. “A woman does have the right to make her own decisions.”
But the January comments did not mark the first time Taylor has claimed support for abortion — and once before he did so only to turn around and vote against safeguarding the right to it, according to a Daily News review of the uptown Manhattan Democrat’s public remarks and legislative record.
During a Sept. 9, 2018 Democratic primary debate ahead of that year’s Assembly elections, Taylor was asked where he stood on the Reproductive Health Act, a bill the state Legislature was considering at the time that proposed repealing several of New York’s remaining abortion restrictions.
“I have no problems with it,” replied Taylor, who was at the time squaring off against two opponents in a competitive primary for his 71st Assembly District.
In a statement a few months earlier about a bill on equal pay, Taylor went out of his way to align himself with abortion rights activists, saying, “From equal pay to reproductive freedom, the fight for full women’s rights continues.”
Nonetheless, in January 2019 — on the heels of securing reelection to the Assembly in November 2018 — Taylor voted against the Reproductive Health Act. The bill still became law after passing both the Assembly and the state Senate, where a majority of Democrats supported it.
Taylor’s 2018-2019 flip-flop on abortion rights could subject him to criticism as he gears up to run in next month’s Democratic primary for Harlem’s 9th City Council District, which is currently represented by socialist Councilwoman Kristin Richardson-Jordan.
Richardson-Jordan, whose race is widely viewed as one of the few competitive contests in the June 27 Council primaries, suggested Taylor’s abortion waffling might be about currying favor with different political constituencies.
“You want me to comment on whether or not Al Taylor is playing politics? I don’t know, I’m not in his head,” she said in a text message.
Allen Roskoff, a longtime LGBTQ and pro-choice advocate in the city, took it a step further, saying Taylor’s on-again, off-again support shows he’s a “fraud.”
“He did what was politically expedient,” he said. “He’s anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ+ and a lying hypocrite.”
Asked for comment last week, Taylor, whose Harlem church has drawn controversy for refusing to perform same-sex marriages, did not acknowledge his nay vote on the Reproductive Health Act.
But in a statement, Taylor listed off some of his support for other abortion-related legislation, including voting for a 2019 bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of reproductive health choices. He also touted his vote this year for the constitutional amendment, which, in addition to protecting abortion, would outlaw discrimination against LGBTQ individuals.
“I fully support women’s rights to their own health and their own bodies. Not only did I say that I would support it, I in fact voted for the Equality Amendment,” his statement said. “In the last year, I have voted for bills to expand protection for abortion providers and to give pregnant folks accurate, non-coercive health care information about abortion. It is vitally important that people are allowed to make their own choices in these matters.”
Taylor’s two other opponents in the 9th Council District race, State Assemblywoman Inez Dickens and criminal justice advocate Yusef Salaam, declined to comment.
In addition to Central and East Harlem, the 9th Council District includes Morningside Heights and a small slice of the most northern part of the Upper West Side.
A veteran local political strategist who has been involved in a 9th race campaign said that while abortion is a pressing issue on the national stage, it’s not front and center for most voters in the district.
“Harlem is still a community of churches,” the strategist said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid disclosing her client. “Abortion is not the issue in Harlem that’s going to make or break you.”
Still, in a sign that he has modeled his messaging on the hot-button issue very differently depending on the audience, Taylor suggested in a Dec. 23, 2018 sermon to his Infinity Mennonite Church of Harlem congregation that he never planned to vote for the Reproductive Health Act, video posted to YouTube shows.
At the time, Taylor had just won reelection and leaders in the state Legislature were preparing votes on the bill.
“They wanted me to vote on it. I said, ‘Nope, not gonna be able to do it.’ And I sat there, I tried to be, you know, objective, I said, ‘OK, just be objective and listen.’ And no matter how I listened to it, it still came up, ‘You can’t vote for that,’ and it was an abortion bill,” Taylor told the congregation, a sharp contrast to his remarks at the primary debate months earlier.
“I said, ‘I’m not touching that bill.’ And the guy says, ‘You know you won’t get elected again.’ I said, ‘It’s possible, but I can sleep at night.'”
Taylor also spoke of his vote against the Reproductive Health Act in an Oct. 28, 2020 interview with Anabaptist World, a Christian podcast, without mentioning that he at one point said he had “no problems” with the legislation.
“I had people tell me I won’t get re-elected because I refused to vote for the bill,” he said on the podcast. “I said I can’t vote in favor of that bill, and I got a lot of nasty communication. I’m always going to honor god with the decisions I make.”