Friday, June 24, 2022

NYC PUBLIC ADVOCATE RESPONDS TO THE SUPREME COURT OVERTURNING ROE V. WADE

 

"When we said, when advocates shouted, that conservatives would attack the core rights afforded to Americans when given the power, when we protested Trump, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, when we spoke about the consequences of the right wing’s agenda, it wasn’t hyperbole. It was a warning, one now realized as the Court strips away a fundamental right to privacy and bodily autonomy, striking at our liberty and at the health and safety of women and pregnant people across the country. 


"People will die because of today’s decision. People have and will always seek abortions, and criminalizing them, making services inaccessible, only makes them more dangerous; pregnant people with no other options will be forced to endure torture or put their lives at risk. On the orders of a radical, far-right agenda, carried out by conservative justices, millions of Americans will lose their rights to body autonomy, to dignity, and to privacy – with harm falling disproportionately on low income communities and people of more color.  


"With the court not only abandoning but endangering people, we need to stand up – for our rights and for our neighbors. Today we mourn, we comfort, and then we move to fight, to action – we cannot wait, because the people who brought this harm today are not waiting to bring more.


"The conservative movement and the judges it installed have done exactly what they promised to do, and they’re promising to do more. This decision openly invites, encourages further attacks on women, on the LGBTQIA community, on communities of more color, on the fundamental rights that we have fought for and won across decades and even centuries. 


"In New York, I want people to know that abortion is legal in our city and state, and it will remain that way – this decision does not change that. At the same time, we can do more to protect the reproductive rights of both New Yorkers and people who come here for abortion services, and the Governor must bring the legislature back into session to enshrine the Equality Amendment.


"We can be stricken today – horrified, furious, distraught – but we cannot be still, and we cannot be silent. We can’t lose our will to fight, strengthened by a movement of millions and looking to the women who have long led that movement and this work as we fight our way forward and resist being dragged back, devastated but never defeated."


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