ALBANY — Ever since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has held rallies, issued statements and signed an executive order, all in the interest, he said, of protecting access to reproductive rights that could be at risk under a Supreme Court poised to lean further to the right.

In doing so, Mr. Cuomo, who faces a re-election primary battle in September, continues to position himself as a liberal bulwark to the Trump administration.

He has called on the State Legislature to return to Albany to pass a bill, the Reproductive Health Act, that would codify the right to an abortion in state law.

But some Democrats in New York, especially his primary rival, Cynthia Nixon, have suggested that the governor’s long tolerance of anti-abortion Senate Republicans in Albany, and a renegade group of Democrats they collaborated with, has badly undercut his feminist bona fides.