Last Friday, just minutes after the conclusion of a press conference calling on the County Executive to support safe access of reproductive health care centers, Astorino vetoed the bill. (Watch the Press Conference.)
He cited a litany of trumped up arguments that he rehearsed on Channel 12 the weekend before. These manufactured arguments have all been proven groundless by some of the greatest legal minds in New York and by New York law itself. Astorino’s veto was dripping with untruths intended to disguise his real motivating force.
Fact: Astorino vetoed the bill because his right-to-life anti-choice extremist constituents asked him to do so. (See the promise made in an email from zealot John Mark-click here.)
Astorino knew he could get away with this because he made sure that there was no super majority to override his veto. His little puppets, led by opportunists Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman who have become traitors to Choice, don’t care what happens to women who use clinics and centers for access to health care.
Unlike these Astorino puppets, many women of Westchester face financial constraints that do not allow them to visit a private doctor so as to avoid harassing and terrorizing demonstrators.
Mr. Astorino and his allies in the Republican delegation are waging a silent war against Westchester’s women and our families.
Despite what Astorino and his minions would have you think, the Clinic Access Bill is not about providers. It is about women: your mother, your sister, your daughter, your aunt.
It is about women accessing safe, good, affordable health care.
It is about health care for senior women who need breast exams, pap smears, and more.
It is about younger women who need cancer screenings and comprehensive reproductive health care.
This is not about County tax dollars. It is about women and health care.
This veto stands with other attacks by this administration and its allies in the Republican delegation.
Astorino’s handpicked candidate Sheila Marcotte–along with Mike Smith, Gordon Burrows, and David Gelfarb–led the way in voting NO to funding senior transportation-just $15,000 in the County budget.
This money was allocated to transportation ONLY for seniors, most of whom are women–some widowed or divorced and statistically one of the least financially stable groups in our society. And Astorino’s puppets wants to deny them transportation!
Astorino has made it increasingly expensive for the working poor to qualify for childcare. The result is that far fewer are qualifying, and then must choose between quitting their jobs or placing their kids in unlicensed and potentially unsafe facilities-something you can bet Astorino would never do to his own kids.
Astorino has cut four after school programs that were receiving partial funding from the federal government. Why? Because he can. Who in a community hanging on just simply to survive has the time or the ability to fight back?
The list of his actions is much longer, and simple to understand.
Rob Astorino has brought the War on Women and our Families to Westchester–and his allies like Sheila Marcotte, are helping him target the most vulnerable.