City Hall, November 18, 2008 – In a joint Civil Rights and Women’s Issues Committee meeting, Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Women’s Issues Committee Chair Helen Sears held a hearing on legislation to protect women’s access to reproductive health care facilities. The Clinic Access Bill strengthens safeguards for women who are faced with harassment and other hostile acts as they enter and exit local reproductive health care clinics.

“Our city, the most diverse city in the world, is one of tolerance and respect – respect for our ideas, our choices, and our physical space,” said Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “Nobody has the right to prevent a woman from taking care of her health. With the Clinic Access Bill, women can be confident in their personal and legal health care decisions – and know that no one will be allowed to stand in their way.”

“The right of women to access safe, competent reproductive health care is an important one,” said Women’s Issues Committee Chair Helen Sears. “This bill will ensure this right against unlawful harassment and intimidation, and will guarantee that every woman can make the reproductive choices that are best for her.”

Together with a coalition of advocates and providers, Speaker Quinn introduced the Clinic Access Bill in September in response to occurrences of women being harassed and intimidated as they entered and exited reproductive health care clinics. Will the implementation of the bill, health clinic staff can have protestors arrested who willfully interfere with a clinic’s operations. Additionally, this Clinic Access Bill will allow police to arrest protestors they see blocking clinic entrances and exits as well as parking lots and driveways, which is vital to health providers in outer boroughs. The Clinic Access Bill would not increase penalties over those in the existing law.

Real-life examples of such harassment and coercion include:

Patients being offered bottled water by protesters in order to forestall her abortion procedure, which endangers the life and well-being of women seeking pain-relief during the abortion procedure;
Clinic directors being knocked to the ground by protesters and called “baby killer”;
Protestors physically blocking patients, clinic staff, postal workers, and delivery workers from entering doors of clinics;
Protestors standing in front of the clinic door saying that there were no doctors inside and directing women down the block or around the corner and putting women into a cab to take them to a “real” clinic.

Other documented occurrences outside of health clinics include:
Protestors using NYPD-owned barricades to hang posters and signs outside of the clinic;
Protestors offering free sonograms to patients but instead showing graphic anti-abortion propaganda;
Protestors shouting at patients that they were desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

“We thank Speaker Quinn and the City Council for sponsoring legislation that ensures women will receive the respect and dignity they deserve when seeking legal health care,” said NARAL Pro-Choice NY President and CEO Kelli Conlin. “Being able to access healthcare without intimidation is common sense. Unfortunately – to the protestors who regularly band together to do those very things – it’s not. And we need a law to stop them. NARAL Pro-Choice New York is proud to be working with our allies, the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg to pass that very law.”

“The Clinic Access Bill is an important piece of legislation that would not only protect health care centers’ right to operate, but ensure the physical and emotional safety of all those who walk through our doors,” said President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City Joan Malin. “As one of the leading providers of reproductive health care in New York City, we see the daily impact of anti-abortion extremists blocking our clients and staff’s path. So while I will always agree that freedom of speech is one of the most important rights that we as Americans have, I balk at the idea that terrorizing innocent Americans is an equally protected right.”

“We believe that the Clinic Access Bill strikes the appropriate balance between free speech and the right to access reproductive health care,” said Ami Sanghvi, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Rights Project. “It is a welcome step forward in fulfilling the city’s mission to protect access to health care services, while respecting the diversity of views of all New Yorkers.”

Other groups who also testified at the hearing were: NYCLU, Dr. Emily Women’s Health Center, Center for Reproductive Rights, National Abortion Federation Brooklyn Ambulatory Surgery Center, The Phillips Family Practice, and Choices Women’s Medical Center.