NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin Statement in Support of Clinic Access Bill
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Samantha Levine September 24, 2008 347-229-8958 NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin
Statement In Support of Clinic Access Bill You get off the subway, having made the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. You’ve spoken with your partner, your friends and your doctor and you know that this is the best decision for you and your family. As you exit the stairs onto the street, you are confronted by a line of men and women blocking your way. Some pass out literature filled with hateful lies and doctored photographs. They show graphic videos of abortions being performed and yell out words like “murderer.” You try to step aside but they thrust forward, surrounding your body and forming a gauntlet all the way to the health center. This isn’t a scene from “Somewhere Else,” USA. Women throughout the city’s five boroughs encounter harassment, intimidation and coercion when they try to access legal reproductive health care. Such behavior should not stand in New York. We are not a community that allows extremists to interfere with women’s lives. And as a community, we are putting our foot down. We will not stand by as harassment and intimidation rule the streets and we will not allow it to escalate to violence. Just today, anti-choice fanatics launched a disruptive 40-day long campaign. Calling upon their supporters to congregate outside reproductive health centers around the country, the state, and the city – OUR city – they aim to pressure and intimidate women who seek critical health services. How fitting, then, that today we thank Speaker Quinn and the City Council for sponsoring legislation that ensures women will receive the respect and dignity they deserve when seeking legal health care. This clinic access law will prohibit anyone from preventing access to reproductive health care services; physically obstructing or blocking another person from entering the clinic; following or harassing another person within fifteen feet of the facility; behaving in a way that places another person in reasonable fear of physical harm; or damaging a reproductive health care facility. Additionally, it protects providers and clinic workers, allowing them to perform their vital jobs without fear. Being able to access healthcare without intimidation sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? Unfortunately – to the protestors who regularly band together to do those very things – it’s not. And we need a law to stop them. NARAL Pro-Choice New York is proud to be working with our allies, the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg to pass that very law.
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