From the President of NARAL-ProChoice New York:

Yesterday the New York City Council voted by an overwhelming majority to pass the Clinic Access Bill (Prop. Int. 826), which provides much needed protections for women’s access to reproductive health clinics across the city.

Even New York City is not immune to anti-choice protests. There are women who visit reproductive health care clinics in our own community who are regularly confronted by protestors who band together to harass, intimidate, and block access to basic reproductive health care services. New Yorkers won’t stand for such barriers to access—and now, we don’t have to.

Yesterday’s vote was the culmination of work that began a few years ago when NARAL Pro-Choice New York recognized the need to strengthen the law protecting access to clinics across the city. We have worked hand in hand with the City Council ever since and were proud to stand with Speaker Christine Quinn and our other allies in the City Council yesterday as they passed this important law.

The Clinic Access Bill passed 40-8, with Councilmembers Tony Avella, Simcha Felder, Vincent Ignizio, Kenneth Mitchell, Eric Ulrich, James Vacca, Peter Vallone, and James Oddo voting against it. We urge you to take this opportunity to either thank your Councilmember for supporting this bill or to express your disappointment that he or she voted against it. Find your Councilmember’s contact info here.

Thank you for standing with us throughout this process, and here’s to more pro-choice victories to come!

For Choice,
Kelli Conlin
President  read more »

Senator Eric Schneiderman is taking strong offense at yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, a sentiment unlikely to go down well with extremist anti-choice advocates like, say, Serph Maltese. From an email:

Dear Friend,

Yesterday, I was scheduled to bring a motion to the senate floor to force a vote on a bill to prohibit pharmacists or pharmacy chains from refusing to dispense emergency contraception or other medications lawfully prescribed by a doctor. My motion came to the floor just a few hours after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart, that--for the first time since the court's historic decision in Roe v. Wade--upheld a national ban on specific abortion procedures.

This ruling, which upheld the federal ban on so-called "partial birth abortions" that was signed into law by President Bush in 2003, was also the first time that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld any limit on abortion rights without providing an exception when the health of the patient was at risk. This decision has crossed a dangerous line, setting a new pace for the ideological attack on reproductive rights and on every woman's essential Constitutional right to control her own body. The full clip of my remarks is available here (audio only).

Sincerely,

Eric Schneiderman
NYS State Senator, 31st SD

Nice work. Just as a reminder what a difference a Democratic Senate would make.

The Supreme Court's decision yesterday to uphold the so-called 'Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act', passed by the republican Congress in 2003, casts into stark relief the simple fact that New York City is the nation's central hub for providing safe and legal abortions.

The federal law bans a procedure used in a limited number of midterm abortions, but the court's decision will probably have an immediate effect on U.S. politics and lawmaking.

And...

"It is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade . . . will also be struck down by the court," predicted Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America.

"The impact of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement is painfully clear," said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, adding: "It took just a year for this new court to overturn three decades of established constitutional law."

The critical concern now is that the definition of 'legal' has been overturned, and it will have a direct local impact on physicians and patients in this City. Read on.  read more »

From The Albany Times-Union:

BUFFALO -- A man already serving time in a state prison for the sniper-shooting murder of a doctor was convicted Thursday on a federal charge of targeting and killing the man because he provided abortions. [...]

"You do not decide that you are the judge, the jury and the executioner, that's what [the defendant] Mr. Kopp did," U.S. Attorney Terrance Flynn said after the verdict.

The government will seek a prison term of life without parole at sentencing, scheduled for June 19, Flynn said.

Kopp, affiliated with the domestic terrorist groups Operation Rescue and The Army of God, killed – executed is a better term – Slepian with a high-powered assault rifle as the latter was making dinner in his kitchen; his children watched their father bleed to death. Following the murder, Operation Rescue released a statement that justified the murder. After Slepian's execution, pro- and anti-choice groups took out a full-page ad in a Buffalo newspaper calling for civility and abjuring violence, which OR also denounced as a "pitiful philosophy and vision", urging followers to take to the streets.  read more »

We've written about Wingnut Maureen O'Connell, anti-choice extremist; now, that message is going to the airwaves in the biggest way. First, via The Albany Project, the official Craig Johnson spot:

Second, via The Daily Politics, an ad put out by EdPac:

The fact of the matter is this: Maureen O'Connell is an extremist, opposing stem-cell research and the morning-after pill, and supporting jail time for doctors and nurses who provide constitutionally guaranteed medical services. That's not partisan hyperbole, but a cold recitation of the public record. If she were to become part of a republican majority in the state Senate, she could legislate her outlandish views on the rest of us.  read more »