To the Editor:

March is Women’s History Month, and New Yorkers statewide are remembering the strong women who made our state great. Now, in addition to honoring our past, we can create the future by enacting the Women’s Agenda in our state budget.

New York succeeds when women and girls are empowered. The Women’s Agenda proactively tackles achievement barriers by removing health, education, and gender disparities, and combating sexual harassment and discrimination.

The Women’s Agenda stops our state from sliding backward on our reproductive health care by removing gender and financially-based barriers to care with insurance coverage for contraception and safeguarding legal abortion with the same regulations used for all other medical procedures.

Without the Women’s Agenda, we leave New Yorkers at risk. With black women nearly four times as likely as white women to die during pregnancy and childbirth, our state must create a Maternal Mortality Review Board to begin tackling the staggering inequity in maternal health.

Also, in the #MeToo era, we must give youth the necessary tools to short-circuit bullying, harassment, and abuse and establish healthy relationships with the “Be Aware-Be Informed” program.

This month, we must do more than talk about what women and girls need to succeed. We must include the full Women’s Agenda in our state budget. Tell your state legislators that New Yorkers deserve no less.

Robin Chappelle Golston

President and CEO

Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts

Albany

Editor’s note: Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts is a not-for-profit, statewide organization that represents New York’s Planned Parenthood affiliates and works to protect and expand access to reproductive health care for New Yorkers.