REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE

+ Expand comprehensive sex education in schools

• Continue to fund sex education initiatives that allow students and youth to lead through Participatory Budgeting.
• Partner with the Department of Education (DOE), youth activists, teachers, and schools to create a culturally competent, inclusive, non-stigmatizing, accessible, and affirming sex education curriculum in New York City’s public elementary, middle, and high schools, including language about:
  • Rights to access reproductive healthcare and resources the school provides.
  • Boundaries and explicit, affirmative consent.
  • Contraception - including birth control, internal/external condoms, dental dams, IUDs, and diaphragms.
  • STIs/STDs that covers testing, prevention, and access to medical care and support after contracting an STI/STD.
  • Sex that does not center cisgender-heterosexual-monogamous relationships.
  • Intersectionality -- race, ethnicity, religion, size/weight, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities.
  • Menstruation and periods.
• Ensure New York City public school students and CUNY students have access to Know Your Rights workshops on their Title IX rights.
• Work with the Department of Education and the CUNY administration to make inclusive and comprehensive accommodations (ex. leave of absences that won’t interfere with the student’s credits, mental health/counseling support, etc.) available for student survivors.

+ Proactively fight medical racism

• Fund community reproductive health clinics and centers that provide free access to birth control and abortions, especially those that serve working class, immigrant, communities of color.
• Support the New York Health Act and advocate for State leaders to pass a single-payer healthcare system to provide care to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay [A.6058/S.5474]. Reaffirm commitment to Medicare for All.
• Fund community based health clinics that improve women’s general health and wellbeing, particularly brown and Black women.
• Expand birthing clinics and fund midwifery.
• Work with medical staff at public hospitals and community health clinics to provide workshops to help eliminate medical bias, especially when it comes to anti-Blackness, fatphobia, homophobia, and transphobia in the medical field.
  • Create an intersectional medical bias curriculum for all students at the CUNY School of Medicine.
  • Fund workshops to address health disparities and medical racism faced by Black and brown communities, especially as it pertains to pregnancy care.
• Expand language access in our healthcare system, fund emergency medical translation and interpretation services, and culturally appropriate care.
• Fight sex-selective abortion bans and PRENDAs, legislation rooted in anti-immigrant bias that disproportionately bars Asian and Asian-American women from accessing reproductive care.
• Fund community based organizations throughout the district to host political education and arts programming around stigmatized or taboo topics like abortion and domestic violence.

+ Increase access to inclusive pregnancy and postnatal care

• Host diaper drives across the district office for parents, providing access to diapers, wipes, and formula.
• Collect racially disaggregated data and expand data transparency about crisis pregnancy centers, including locations, numbers, services provided, and populations reached.
• Expand baseline funding for NYC Care to include postpartum care for all recently pregnant parents.
• Fund trauma-informed initiatives, like bereavement care.
• Connect constituents with culturally competent and language accessible mental health services. throughout all stages of their pregnancy, pre-/post-abortion, and post-miscarriage.
• Expand the Clinic Access Law:
  • Allow patients impacted by harassment or threats prohibited under the Clinic Access Law to seek damages with the NYC Commission on Human Rights.
  • Connect patients with legal aid services if they want to pursue a civil suit.
  • Help constituents access free trauma-informed mental health services.
  • Fund clinic-escort programs.
• Expand access to universal early childcare and family-based care centers.
• Connect constituents with guidance on how to foster or adopt children, and advocate for New York State to expand insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments.
  • Partnering with LGBTQ+ groups to provide parental resources including family planning, inclusive birthing classes, adoption, IVF, sperm donations, and mental health supporting.
• While fighting to end mass incarceration and jails, advocate to ensure that incarcerated folks in New York City jails and prisons are given proper pregnancy care and resources, and families are not separated.
  • Provide greater investment in family enrichment centers as an alternative to the practice of punitively and violently separating families through the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).