FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 7, 2019
Contact: Stephanie Reichin
E: [email protected]
C: 617.549.3745
Event follows the launch of NIRH and NIRH action fund’s statewide, half-a-million dollar campaign calling for immediate and long-overdue passage of the RHA.
New York – The National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH) Action Fund released the following statement today following a press conference calling for swift passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA). Featuring Hillary Clinton, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, incoming Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, as well as RHA sponsors State Senator Liz Krueger and Assembly Member Deborah Glick, the press conference demonstrated the Governor’s steadfast commitment to passing the RHA this year. Today’s event follows the unprecedented electoral victories for pro-choice candidates in New York State and the launch of NIRH and NIRH action fund’s statewide, half-a-million dollar campaign calling for immediate and long-overdue passage of the RHA.
“NIRH is proud to stand with Secretary Clinton, Governor Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor Hochul, Assemblymember Glick, and Senator Kreuger today as they introduce the RHA, to update New York’s outdated laws, ensuring greater access to abortion care, especially in this time of unprecedented threats at the federal level,” said Andrea Miller, President of the NIRH Action Fund. “With New York’s pro-choice majority in both houses of the legislature and a Governor committed to passage, New Yorkers cannot and should not have to wait any longer. Together, we can swiftly pass the RHA this session, taking an important and long overdue step to strengthen abortion laws in New York.”
New York is often called a progressive leader, however its woefully out of date laws governing abortions still force women to travel out of state for needed medical care and fail to reflect best medical practice. Enacted prior to Roe v. Wade, New York’s abortion laws still regulate abortion as a crime, rather than a medical procedure, and maintains a Civil War-era prohibition on self-managed abortion that make women vulnerable to prosecution. The RHA would permit nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and midwives to provide nonsurgical abortion care and move the abortion law from the state’s penal code to the health code, where it belongs.
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The NIRH Action Fund conducts nonpartisan advocacy and electoral engagement to advance reproductive freedom in states and cities across the country.