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With Hillary Clinton to his right, female elected officials seated before him and cheering women filling the audience, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday promised to protect women’s reproductive rights by expanding the state’s abortion laws within the first 30 days of the new legislative session.

Mr. Cuomo’s vow was not exactly new. But the pageantry of the occasion seemed to reflect the circumstances that had prompted it: a Legislature newly controlled by Democrats raring to broaden reproductive rights, and a federal government increasingly looking to rein them in, all against the backdrop of a state with abortion laws that are not as liberal as many perceive them to be.

“The Republican Senate said, ‘You don’t need a state law codifying Roe v. Wade. No administration would ever roll back Roe v. Wade,’” Mr. Cuomo said at the event at Barnard College, describing why previous efforts had languished for so long. “So help me God, this was the conversation.”

That Republican-led State Senate is no more, ousted in November in favor of an overwhelming Democratic majority and the chamber’s first-ever female leader. The federal administration, meanwhile, is indeed seeking to roll back Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion: President Trump has appointed two conservative judges to the Supreme Court, and women’s rights activists are warning that the decision is in peril.