Laying out an agenda to repair health care inequities for women in the city, Ney York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday that four city-run health clinics in New York will offer abortion medication free of charge.
Adams announced his “New York City Women’s Health Agenda” at City Hall alongside city health officials, stressing that it’s long overdue that they break taboos and make New York City a model for the future of women’s health care.
In a sweeping address on women’s health, Adams said that health and health care has been centered around men for so long that men would’ve gotten a paid vacation if they had periods, pap smears, and menopause.
Stressing that they’ve been standing on the sidelines of women’s health for too long, he said that he has personally seen how the health system is letting the women down, noting that if men could get pregnant, Congress would not have tried to pass abortion restricting laws.
According to the governor’s office, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene clinic in the Bronx will offer abortion pills starting Wednesday, while additional three clinics in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens will start dispensing the medication by the end of the year.
In addition to the pills dispensed by NYC’s hospital system, where the abortion pills are already available, the new four sites together could disperse up to 10,000 abortion pills per year.
Adams emphasized that no other city in the nation or in the world has a public health department that is providing medication abortion, noting that their move to offer the medication for free at the city-funded clinics is aimed at helping patients get around insurance and economic hurdles they might run up against in the hospitals.
His wide-ranging plan aimed at building a city that is here for all women and girls, as he himself pointed out, includes efforts – from lactation rooms for nursing mothers to paid leave for cancer screenings – to make NYS and its workplaces more women’s health care friendly.
The city reports that Adams’ agenda also strives to address racial disparities in women’s health care, including the maternal mortality rate among pregnant Black women that’s over nine times the rate among pregnant white women.
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