Category: Updates

Moving Us Forward, Protecting Our Civil Rights

HONORING
Rosalind Clay Carter & Ronnie Pawelko, Esq.

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER
Zachary W. Carter, Esq., Corporation Counsel, City of New York

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Amy Hobby & Anne Hubbell, Award-Winning Film Producers & Founders of Tangerine Entertainment

Host Committee
In Formation
Madeline and David Arnow, Suzanne Berger, Esq., Hon. Noam Bramson,
Hon. Catherine Borgia, Hon. David Buchwald, Betty Cotton,
Shari Gordon, Esq., Hon. George Latimer, Arnold Linhardt,
Wendy Mackenzie, Hon. Shelley Mayer, Hon. Steve Otis,
Hon. Amy Paulin, Rachelle “Rocky” Richard, Hon. Bill Ryan,
Hon. Andrea Stewart-Cousins

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2015
The Scarsdale Women’s Club
37 Drake Road, Scarsdale, New York 10583
COCKTAILS – 6PM | PROGRAM – 7PM

 

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Hillary 2016

Hillary_Clinton_2016_president_bid_confirmed

FINALLY!  We have a Presidential Candidate who considers “women’s rights to be human rights and human rights to be women’s rights”.
Hillary Clinton has an outstanding activist’s record of advocating for women and their families.  
She is a candidate who:
  • „ „has and is championing comprehensive reproductive healthcare for all women;
  • „ is calling for equal pay;
  • „ is fighting for paid family leave;
  • „ is demanding changes to inadequate and repressive educational systems;
  • „ is speaking out domestically and internationally against the horrors of domestic violence and sex trafficking; and
  • calling “for a ‘movement’ to help women at work, arguing that women face not only a ‘glass ceiling’ but a floor that could collapse underneath them, erasing the gains made to win equality between the sexes”.
This candidate – who happens to be a woman— has made gender equity and advancing the rights and welfare of women key components of everything she has done.  At every turn, Hillary Clinton demonstrates that the advancement of the rights and opportunities for women and girls is central to who she is and what she stands for.If you are ready to support Hillary, Choice Matters is looking for volunteers to help reach out to voters in the coming months.  You don’t have to travel across the country to make a difference.

Please complete the form below to give us your contact information so that we can reach out to you in the months to come.

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BREAKING NEWS: Santorum Couldn’t Stop Glick

Guess who was in Albany on Tuesday?
Anti-choice extremist, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum!!!

You remember Rick –  he believes that the Supreme Court decisions allowing married and single women the right to birth control were wrong and should be overturned.

Why Albany? Santorum thinks New York is vulnerable. He was here joining with others to egg on anti-choice legislators to oppose bills protecting a woman’s right to choose.

But that didn’t stop Assemblywoman Deborah Glick who introduced a bill, A 6221, that would guarantee New York women the full constitutional protection of Roe v. Wade – a protection sorely missing from New York law.

We desperately need to protect New York women from the horrific attacks being waged against us in states across the country and in Washington D.C. The passage of A 6221 is the way to do that!

New York’s Assembly is leading the way.

Call your Assembly member and tell her/him that you support A 6221.

Then let’s make sure the Senate follows!

Tell Gov. Cuomo, “Words are NOT enough!”

Governor Cuomo is not abiding by his own campaign promises of standing up for equality for women!

In January 2013, Governor Cuomo announced a sweeping ten-point Women’s Equality Agenda (WEA) for New York that included protections for abortion rights, pay equity, against housing and pregnancy discrimination, and more.

The WEA never made it to the floor of the Senate for a vote because a group of five Democrats, led by Senator Jeff Klein, split with their party after it won a majority in the 2012 elections. These five rogue Democrats empowered the Republicans by creating a power-sharing deal that basically allowed the GOP to decide what bills should come to the floor for a vote. Republican leader Dean Skelos made it perfectly clear that the 10-point WEA would never to come to the floor for a vote.

According to RH Reality Check, 7/30/2014, “Gov. Cuomo gave his blessing to the deal that put two men in charge of the Senate, rather than the pro-choice [duly elected majority] leader of his own party, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first Black woman to lead a New York State legislative caucus.” But we don’t know that for sure!

What we do know is that in the 2014 New York gubernatorial election, Cuomo unveiled a brand-new Women’s Equality Party complete with a commercial starring himself and his family. The commercial made clear that the passage of the WEA was of utmost importance to Governor Cuomo. Women deserved nothing less. But then the Republicans won control of the Senate in the 2014 elections, and Klein and his buddies, despite pre-election promises, joined forces with the Republicans, again, and Andrea Stewart-Cousins became the New York State Senate Minority Leader.

Fast forward to today. It is budget time in Albany. Sheldon Silver is no longer Assembly Speaker. The Governor and everyone else in Albany has declared it a time for transparency.

Governor Cuomo has the opportunity to make his championing of Women’s Equality mean something. After all, that is what he ran on: equality for women.

Instead, Cuomo invited into the behind-closed-doors budget negotiations Senate Leader Republican Dean Skelos, Assembly Speaker Democrat Carl Heastie and JEFF KLEIN. WHERE IS SENATE MINORITY LEADER ANDREA STEWART-COUSINS? WHY WASN’T SHE INVITED IN?

Cuomo invited Jeff Klein who represents 5 Senators in but left Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins who represents 25 Senators outside. That is not equality and this is disrespectful. Klein has no business in the room. He does not represent any recognized political party, while Andrea Stewart-Cousins represents the Democratic Caucus.

Sign this petition and let Governor Cuomo know what you think: Let Her In!
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/let-her-in.fb52?source=s.icn.fb&r_by=5603782

Remember, it’s Women’s History Month! Let’s make some Good Herstory!

Congress Set to Cut Your Abortion Rights This Thursday

This Thursday, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the US House of Representatives will vote to ban 20-week abortion nationally.

The symbolism of the day can’t be missed.

The 114th Congress’ anti-choice politicians are using the Roe v. Wade anniversary to send a clear message: They are gunning for women and our reproductive rights.

In the Senate, the new Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, made the passage of this ban a campaign promise when running for re-election last fall!

Just hours after being sworn in, the right-wing controlled Congress introduced this 20-week abortion ban.

If the 20-week abortion ban becomes law, it will effect women in every state in the country – jeopardize women’s health everywhere. The bill is unconstitutional and would institute criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison for health care providers for delivering safe medical care to women who need it. [1]

The bill, HR 36, deceptively named the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”, is based on lies and junk science claims that:
*fetuses are viable and can feel pain at 20 weeks (both false),
*abortion at that stage is too risky for women (it is still safer than childbirth), and
*the public supports a ban (in truth, the overwhelming majority wants pre-viability abortions, including at and after 20 weeks, to remain safe and legal).[2]

With women’s rights supporters now in the minority in Congress, we need to fight harder than ever against attacks on our reproductive rights. We need to reach out to Congress and to President Obama. If the bill passes Congress, we will need President Obama to stand up for all women and veto this bill.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION
(This will take you to the National Partnership for Women and Families to facilitate contacting Congress.)

We Must Speak Out!
[1] National Partnership for Women and Families
[2] National Organization for Women, Terry O’Neill

Westchester vs. Every Other County in the Country

There is no question that the November 4th Elections were horrific for women nationally and in states across the country including New York. Extremists with their anti-woman agendas took control of both houses of Congress, state governments, and, here in New York, the State Senate. Politicians who have pledged to enact sweeping abortion bans, take away women’s right to birth control coverage, and do away with equal pay legislation have taken control.

But here in Westchester, things were different. Why? Because of WCLA – PAC, WCLA – Choice Matters, our bright yellow ProChoice Voting Guide – and YOU.Where an estimated four billion dollars was spent nationally on campaigns, we managed to take our meager funds and change elections. We madetens of thousands of phone calls to our database, got over 54,000 copies of our yellow ProChoice Voting Guide into mailboxes reaching over 85,000 pro-choice voters, and emailed (more than some of you liked). And we got out the vote! As a result, 95% of our candidates were elected, including Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney and State Senator George Latimer who were both under targeted assault. Plus we elected a terrific Supreme Court Justice, James Hubert, to his first term representing the 9th District which is made up of 5 counties. In addition, our strong advocacy for the re-election of our phenomenal pro-choice Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, resulted in a very strong win for him here in Westchester, the county that decided this year’s elections. We decisively defeated Westchester’s own anti-choice extremist County Executive in favor of our pro-choice Governor. Our pro-choice actions dramatically impacted Election Day outcomes here in New York State.

2014 stands in sharp contrast to 2013 when due to insufficient fundswe were unable to mail out our Voting Guide, and pro-choice candidates lost in astonishing numbers. In 2013, they lost by small margins, and this year they won by those same margins. These races – decided by just a few percentage points – are where our ProChoice Voting Guide makes the difference between winning and losing.

Women vote at higher rates than their male peers, and that gap increases with age. And women are our base. Our database demographic is not comprised of your typical internet and social media users. Reaching this target population, the one that can change elections, requires more traditional avenues of communication – the telephone, and yes, snail mail – the U.S. Postal Service. And the postage rate just keeps going up.

But our work is not limited to election time. We work all year long – advocating, organizing, reviewing proposed legislation, writing op-eds, making sure we have input in policies and programs – while every week we are calling new voters to identify whether they are pro-choice and can be added to our database. We are on the frontlines and the cutting edge. For example, immediately following the Hobby Lobby decision, Choice Matters approached Attorney General Schneiderman’s office with a simple straight-forward idea: Create legislation that requires employers to disclose whether or not they provide contraceptive coverage, and if they change the coverage, require that the company disclose the change. This, the Reproductive Rights Disclosure Act, was our brainchild and made New York the first state in the nation to take action in response to the U. S. Supreme Court’s horrendous decision. It was so impressive that President Obama enacted a version of our bill.

Unfortunately, this all costs money. Your support today is essential to our ability to function. Without your financial contribution, there will be no ProChoice Voting Guide or people building our database, or staff to hold New York policies in check. We scare some candidates and elected officials, and reward others, because we hold them accountable for their actions.

Choice Matters has been standing strong since 1972! That’s 42+ years! Choice Matters has interviewed hundreds of thousands of female voters, identified those who are pro-choice, and added them to our database. It’s our amazing staff, database and mailed ProChoice Voting Guide that make us victorious. We’ve always understood this.  We don’t need massive SUPER PAC money, but we do need your contributions. As we’ve clearly demonstrated, we spend our funds wisely.  The more you invest in us, the greater our impact will be on New York State and federal politics. It starts with a donation from you. Make no mistake about it, we are now in the fight of our lives as extremists in Congress, followed by those in our state governments, including in Albany, are committed to rolling back women’s rights. For example, a Personhood Bill – giving a fertilized egg the same legal rights as a human being, and thereby banning abortion and most birth control – has already passed the House of Representatives. After this election, they have enough votes to bring the bill to the Senate floor! Limitations imposed by Congress will affect New York.

Can you chip in to help us fight to defend the right to choose against this new anti-choice majority? Your generous contribution of $25, $100, $250 or more will help Choice Matters’ ProChoice campaign continue to identify and educate pro-choice voters across the county and state, and change elections. We kept Congressman Maloney in office despite horrendous attacks, and with your support we will continue to do more.

Please say, “Yes, I’ll make a donation to help defend abortion rights against this new anti-choice majority.”  Consider making a contribution in someone’s name, as a holiday gift!

Choice Matters is a mighty pro-choice organization with a proven strategy. When you, our donors, provide us with the funding needed, we are able to do extraordinary things. Now more than ever, we need your support. Your contribution, whatever you can afford – large or small – will make a difference.  Every dollar truly counts.

Please mail your contribution today or you may securely contribute on line at www.choicematters.org.

Supporting Choice Matters is the most valuable action an advocate for Choice can take.

Do They Really Think They Can Fool Women?

Candidates’ OTC Birth Control Plans are a Raw Deal

This election season, many candidates, particularly Republicans, from Virginia to Colorado, are trying to run from their war on women voting records by coming out in support of over-the-counter (OTC) birth control. Make no mistake, they are targeting middle and low income women – people who would not vote for them anyway!

Their proposal might seem like they suddenly understand the need for increasing contraceptive access, but don’t be fooled!

These candidates just want women to pay for the full cost of their birth control, with no help from insurance coverage.These candidates are helping insurance companies, not women. (Note, they are not suggesting doing away with insurance coverage for Viagra.)

These candidates aren’t supporting women’s reproductive health — they’re attacking it.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), out-of-pocket costs prevent many women from consistently accessing birth control, and the most effective – and most expensive – methods, such as the intrauterine device (IUD), always require a visit to a health care provider. (So what about a doctor’s visit is OTC?)

Just to make this point even clearer, not one birth control manufacturer has sought FDA approval for OTC birth control — so these so-called improvements would result in middle and low income earning women being without contraceptive access because they can’t afford it!

This OTC proposal comes from the same candidates who have pushed to restrict access to comprehensive reproductive health care. These same politicians have placed repealing the Affordable Care Act which would cover contraception as preventative care and cutting back on public clinic funding at the top of their agendas. These candidates want: NO preventative care coverage for annual exams, Pap smears, or contraception. 

OTC contraception has a place in efforts to expand reproductive choice. People need access to services like emergency contraception on demand. But putting birth control in front of the counter is only the first step to ensuring comprehensive access. Women need policy makers who support a full spectrum of reproductive health decisions. Instead of doing away with insurance coverage for contraceptives, we need to expand it to cover Plan B, a very expensive OTC emergency contraceptive.

Women, don’t be fooled. Don’t let these candidates stick women with the bill!

by Olivia Cappello

 

Breaking: Choice Matters & AG Schneiderman First to Respond

New York is the first state in the nation to take action in response to the U. S. Supreme Court’s divisive Hobby Lobby decision.

Today, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced that he together with State Senate Democratic Conference Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer would propose legislation in Albany that would help to shield New York women from the effect of the Court’s decision.

The legislation to be proposed is the brainchild of WCLA – Choice Matters.  We are incredibly proud that our idea is now the Reproductive Rights Disclosure Act.

Immediately following the June 30th Hobby Lobby decision, Choice Matters approached Attorney General Schneiderman’s office with a simple straight-forward idea: Create legislation that requires employers to disclose whether or not they provide contraceptive coverage, and if they change the coverage, require that the company disclose the change.

We cannot change the Hobby Lobby decision right now, but we can make sure New York women know what they are getting into when seeking employment, or if their employer changes its policy.

Click here and read more about the Reproductive Rights Disclosure Act.

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GOP’s top candidates fail women

The Republicans’ top two candidates, for governor and attorney general, are anti-choice candidates who have shown true disdain for the well-being of New York women. No longer is the standard bearer for the Republican Party pro-choice governor Nelson Rockefeller, who signed New York’s abortion-rights bill into law. Instead, today’s New York Republican Party has sought out extreme anti-choice politicians to run.

Their gubernatorial candidate, Rob Astorino, has made his anti-choice position a cornerstone of his campaign. He promises to do to the state what he has done to Westchester County. That means vetoing legislation guaranteeing women safe access to reproductive health care, eliminating funding for health centers, gutting funding for sex education and more. If elected governor, he would be able to do unimaginable budgetary and legal damage to women.

Astorino and John Cahill, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general, have taken aim at the Women’s Equality Act. This act is a 10-point plan that ensures women are treated fairly in the workplace, helps protect survivors of domestic violence and preserves access to reproductive health care. Calling the reproductive health component of the act “ghastly” and “hideous,” Astorino has declared he will “guarantee” never to sign it into law. Cahill, the candidate whose legal mind the public is supposed to trust, dismisses it as unnecessary.

The truth is that New York’s current laws do not give women the full constitutionally recognized protection of Roe v. Wade and do not incorporate the medical advances that have been made in reproductive health over the past 44 years. New York women deserve reproductive legislation that does both, and the vast majority of New Yorkers want the reproductive component of the Women’s Equality Act enacted into law. But Astorino and Cahill don’t, and so they work to mislead the public about the Women’s Equality Act and the status of New York’s abortion rights.

In recent years, anti-abortion forces have chipped away at that constitutionally protected right state by state, driving women’s clinics out of operation and making it impossible for many women to obtain reproductive health services of all types – including contraception and abortion. In New York, 53 percent of our counties have no abortion clinics, and every year anti-choice bills, like the defunding of Planned Parenthood, must be beaten back in Albany.

It’s easy to say the denial of women’s health services couldn’t happen in New York. But unless the rights guaranteed by Roe are codified in state law, New York women will remain vulnerable to attacks from anti-abortion extremists – and Cahill has a history of undermining the right to choose.

Despite not holding public office, Cahill has an anti-choice record. He was Gov. George Pataki’s chief of staff and stood with his administration as it promoted policies that denied New York women access to reproductive health services and empowered abortion opponents. His administration also vetoed expansion of access to emergency contraception and denied reproductive health care to thousands of women by contracting with health maintenance organizations that refused to provide these essential services. This practice was not disclosed to women before they enrolled – imposing an undue burden by forcing them to find out-of-network providers after the fact.

Astorino and Cahill pose a sharp contrast to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Cuomo has always stood strong as an advocate of women’s reproductive rights in theory and in reality, as seen in all 10 points of the Women’s Equality Act. Schneiderman’s record of advocating for women is legendary, both as a state senator and now as attorney general. As a senator, he led the effort to pass the Clinic Anti-Violence Act to protect abortion clinic workers, doctors and patients from violence and harassment – a bill that Astorino would have vetoed. It was signed into law in 1999, and was the first piece of pro-choice legislation enacted in New York in more than a decade.

Voters need to know that these four candidates are diametrically opposed when it comes to women’s rights. The fact that Astorino and Cahill do not care about what is in the best interest of 51 percent of the state population means they do not deserve to hold office in New York.

The writer is president of Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion – Choice Matters.

You Can’t Have It Both Ways!

Sorry, Mitt, Corporations are NOT People!

Last week, the Supreme Court heard Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

This case pits corporations against women’s health care.
â–ªThe Affordable Care Act requires health insurance plans to cover contraceptives without additional cost-sharing; and
▪Hobby Lobby, Inc. (HL) does not want to comply. It is claiming that the requirement to cover contraceptives violates its “personal” religious beliefs.

But HL is a corporation, an “it”, a thing, not a person. And the founder of HL, David Green, made the decision to make HL an “it” years ago. Corporations do not have a gender, or personal identity, or religion.

That is what makes this lawsuit so completely outrageous.
A corporation is an independent legal entity owned by shareholders. This means that the corporation itself, not its shareholders, is held legally liable for the actions and debts the business incurs. When an individual or group of individuals chooses to incorporate a business, it is because that individual or group wishes to be shielded from personal liability and to realize significant tax benefits. HL and David Green have been reaping the benefits of HL being a corporation for over 41 years.

When David Green decided to incorporate HL in 1972, making it a corporation, he accepted the trade off.  Becoming a corporation limited Green’s personal liability, but it also technically made him no longer the owner. The corporation and the individual were no longer synonymous.

Officially and technically, Green became a shareholder. That means that if something bad happens – for example a child suffers lead poisoning as a result of an HL-sold craft – HL would be sued, not David Green. Green’s personal property would not be at risk.

Furthermore, all corporations enjoy great tax benefits, including the shareholders of closely-held ones, like HL. (A closely-held corporation is one in which there is only a limited number of shareholders.)

Shareholder Green and HL should be told they can’t have it both ways. And if Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to provide contraceptive coverage, the corporation should pay the fine!

The truly frightening thing is that HL could win because we have pro-corporation justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts has already tried to distinguish between the rights of corporations and closely-held corporations. Huge corporations such as Dell and Heinz are also closely-held corporations. HL grossed more than $3 billion last year and has 14,000 full time employees working in more than 600 stores. If it walks like duck, and quacks like a duck…