New York Metropolis is now providing free abortion drugs at public clinics, turning into the primary metropolis within the nation to take action.
The free drugs shall be accessible at 4 public clinics throughout town, Mayor Eric Adams introduced Tuesday, simply days earlier than the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Courtroom resolution that granted a constitutional proper to abortion. On Wednesday, a Bronx clinic turned the primary to supply the drugs, and they are going to be accessible at clinics in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens by the tip of the 12 months.
The town already affords medicine abortions at its 11 public hospitals. The brand new program expands entry to the 4 clinics and supplies a method for individuals to entry the process at no cost.
“No different metropolis within the nation or on this planet has a public well being division that’s offering medicine abortion,” Adams mentioned. “We’re the primary.”
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What are the main points on New York’s free abortion drugs program?
This system is funded by a $1.2 million bundle for sexual well being companies, town’s well being division mentioned.
As soon as the medicine abortion packages are up and operating, the 4 clinics will have the ability to present as much as 10,000 medicine abortions yearly, Ashwin Vasan, town’s Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene commissioner, mentioned at a Tuesday information convention.
Vasan mentioned the clinics permit scheduled appointments and walk-ins, and drugs abortion care shall be “open to anybody,” whether or not they’re from New York Metropolis or not. The town additionally supplies abortion care to anybody no matter immigration standing, Vasan mentioned.
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Mayor Eric Adams proclaims imaginative and prescient for girls’s well being
Free medicine abortions are a part of Adams’ imaginative and prescient for a “New York Metropolis Girls’s Well being Agenda,” he mentioned on the Tuesday information convention. The initiative is “aimed toward dismantling many years of systemic inequity which have negatively impacted the well being of ladies throughout the 5 boroughs,” in keeping with a press release from his workplace.
Adams cited a number of examples of inequities in ladies’s well being and mentioned the common maternal mortality charge amongst Black pregnant individuals is greater than 9 occasions the speed of white pregnant individuals.
“For too lengthy well being and well being care has been centered round males, however that modifications immediately,” Adams mentioned. “We’ve been standing on the sidelines of ladies’s well being for too lengthy, and I’ve personally seen firsthand how the well being system is letting our ladies down. It’s lengthy overdue that we break taboos and make New York Metropolis a mannequin for the way forward for ladies’s well being care. We’re going to construct a metropolis that’s right here for all ladies and women.”
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Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Deliberate Parenthood of Higher New York, referred to as this system “essential … to our bodily autonomy and fundamental human rights.”
“A more healthy New York Metropolis requires intentional investments in decreasing well being care disparities that systematically drawback Black, Latinx and marginalized communities,” Stark mentioned in a press release. “This contains making certain equal entry to sexual and reproductive well being companies and compassionate abortion care.”
In a press release, Dr. Herminia Palacio, president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, a analysis and coverage group that helps abortion rights, applauded this system as a step to “prioritize the well being, well-being and reproductive autonomy of our ladies and women.’
“New York Metropolis can solely be as robust because the well being of the thousands and thousands of ladies and women who stay and work right here and make this place the ever-resilient and thriving city heart we’re,” mentioned Palacio, who can also be a former New York Metropolis deputy mayor for well being and human companies.
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NYC packages goal abortion entry
The medicine abortion effort is one in all a number of New York Metropolis packages launched after the Roe v. Wade was overturned.
In March, Adams introduced a citywide enlargement of doula companies, a midwifery initiative and a maternal well being companies program. In August, he signed the NYC Abortion Rights Act legislative bundle, strengthening abortion protections and paving the best way to free medicine abortions. And in November, town launched the Abortion Entry Hub, which confidentially connects ladies searching for abortion care to suppliers throughout town, in addition to companies for monetary assist, transportation and lodging.
What are the opposite components of Adams’ ladies’s well being initiative?
Different elements of Adams’ “mannequin for the way forward for ladies’s well being in New York Metropolis” embrace:
- Relaunching a sexual schooling activity drive particularly concentrating on younger New Yorkers and faculty workers members
- Monitoring charges of most cancers, psychological well being situations, coronary heart illness and different situations, in addition to life expectancy and key indicators differentiated by age and race
- Convening ladies’s well being leaders for a Girls’s Historical past Month summit in March
- Launching a marketing campaign specializing in supporting New Yorkers with hypertension and diabetes, particularly concentrating on neighborhoods within the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan that have well being and different socioeconomic disparities.
- Launching a family-based substance use dysfunction program
- Increasing entry to pelvic ground bodily remedy
Contact Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or comply with her on Twitter at @christinetfern.
