Tag: westchester county board of legislators

Breaking News: The War on Women Hits Westchester!

Right to Life County Executive
Cuts Funding for Contraception for Teens, Well-Baby Care and Sex Education

This is outrageous! Less than three months after the Department of Health and Human Services announced that contraception is so important that it is being designated preventive care, in accordance with the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, and joining the list of key services such as mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, prenatal care, well-woman visits, and gestational diabetes screenings, Astorino puts his right-to-life, anti-birth-control, far-right mentality into action, attacking our teenagers’ health and rights.

Nothing seems more like preventive care than contraception!

Why is Astorino doing this? This is clearly not about reducing our taxes or about jobs.

Just like the tea baggers in Congress who are seizing every opportunity to attack women’s reproductive rights, Astorino has chosen this moment, when Westchester has sky rocketing unemployment and depleted tax revenues to put his personal anti-choice tea party stamp on our county.

Simply not funding contraceptives and not teaching sex ed does not make sex go away. Instead, it will most likely lead to a dramatic increase in teen pregnancies.

When these babies are then born there will be no well-baby care available because Astorino has cut that too.

Astorino is the true embodiment of the right-to-life philosophy: care about the fetus, but when it’s born, throw it and its mother under the bus.

Who is most effected by Astorino’s actions? Anyone who  utilizes any one of Westchester County’s community health centers—teenagers, the unemployed, the working poor, those without health insurance.

Who won’t it affect? Astorino and his financially secure friends.

On Election Day
Astorino Wants Your Help In This Attack

Astorino has hand-picked candidates to challenge incumbents. The Astorino gang have all sworn their allegiance to him as attested to at the press conference held on October 7th. On the steps of the County office building and in their own press releases, these candidates have said they will be a [guaranteed] vote for the Astorino agenda and that they share his [governing] philosophy more than 99% of the time.

That means they too believe in outsourcing jobs including the Community Health Centers, as well as cutting funding for contraceptives for teens, well-baby care and sex ed.

Astorino and his gang are committed to creating a sick Westchester, not a healthy one!

Celebrate the Meaning of Roe: Vote-Special Election Feb. 15 – Elect MaryJane Shimsky!

Roe v. Wade is under attack across the United States. Women are losing their/our constitutional right to privacy and to control our own bodies.
Empowered by the 2010 elections, states are working to pass damaging legislation. (Click here to read more.)
BUT YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Vote in the Special Election
Tuesday February 15th

You Vote – You Choose
MaryJane Shimsky—a pro-choice, progressive, budget and tax-minded candidate, running on the Working Families and Democratic lines, who has fought for the residents of Hastings-on-Hudson and the Town of Greenburgh on such projects as Ridge Hill and Stew Leonards, and worked as the Director of Community Relations for Assemblyman Richard Brodsky;
or
Astorino’s next mini-me—anti-choice Nicholas DeCicco who refused to complete Choice Matters’ questionnaire. DeCicco, like Marcotte, will walk the Right-to-Life Astorino anti-choice anti-child anti-family walk, voting as he is told.
Say “NO” to Another Astorino Puppet
In November 2009, Westchester elected a Right-to-Life (RTL) County Executive, Rob Astorinio. We have been paying the price ever since.
Astorino may want to protect the so-called unborn, but he sure has made his position about the born clear: Astorino says, Throw them under the bus to every child and family in need. Astorino’s budget is the antithesis of family. He focuses on cutting all services that support working mothers, early childhood programs and corresponding housing support.
On his coattails, Sheila Marcotte won in the 10th County Legislative District and is doing exactly as her commander has directed–voting in lockstep with him against child care scholarships, low income daycare and funding for community healthcare programs, among others–voting against a safety net and costing taxpayers millions.
Astorino’s other puppets have done the same. Believe me when I say, we do not need and cannot afford another Astorino mini-me.
Worry About Funding!
Astorino’s Right to Life beliefs have already corrupted the budget process. Laws are not the only things at stake. Budgets decide who matters.

Remember it was Astorino who took a sledge hammer to child care funding, pulverizing it by taking away 4.3 million dollars—this after the most recent census data reported that 16.7 percent of Westchester children under 5 years of age are living in poverty, which is up from 9.6 percent in 2005—and added new positions for his political cronies. When those positions were cut by the County Legislators, Astorino hired his cronies anyway using empty lines on the budget!

SPECIAL ELECTION
TUESDAY
FEB. 15TH
Choice Matters
Endorses
MaryJane Shimsky
for
Westchester County Board of Legislators