This issue is noted here: https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/doc/ssl-errors/
Original reference for this fix is from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26461966/osx-10-10-curl-post-to-https-url-gives-sslread-error/26538127#26538127
php -i | grep "SSL Version"
SSL Version => SecureTransport
brew uninstall php71-mcrypt
brew uninstall php71
brew install --with-openssl curl
brew install --with-homebrew-curl php71
brew install php71-mcrypt
php -i | grep "SSL Version"
SSL Version => OpenSSL/1.0.2j
I finally had success after many hours. I'm not sure if it was the order in which I uninstalled or installed brews, but I finally got it to work using the method over at "this-old-code" mentioned above. I'm not sure if my ~/.bash_profile changes made a different or not, but I'm posting them here for others. This was recommended by for the compiler after the "brew reinstall curl".
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/curl/bin:$PATH"
LDFLAGS: -L/usr/local/opt/curl/lib
CPPFLAGS: -I/usr/local/opt/curl/include
PKG_CONFIG_PATH: /usr/local/opt/curl/lib/pkgconfig