Ways to Get Involved in the Fight for Abortion Access in the Finger Lakes Region and beyond
1. Write to local healthcare providers requesting that they provide abortion services.
Did you know that there is no abortion access in Geneva? Not a single health facility provides abortion services, including medication abortion. And Geneva is not alone. This is the situation in lots of rural communities, including many in the Finger Lakes. Consider contacting your local healthcare providers and encouraging them to offer abortion services.
2. Contact your assembly member and ask them to support A. 6334, the “Hospital Transparency Act”
As more and more hospitals get incorporated into large hospital systems (like Rochester Regional Health, for example), services are being removed from smaller, rural hospitals in an effort to cut costs. It has, therefore, become increasingly difficult to find out what types of care or services an individual hospital provides. There is a “Hospital Transparency” bill, A. 6334, which is designed to solve this problem by requiring the Department of Health to collect a list of what services are being excluded from each general hospital and to publish that information in an accessible way on its website. Having already passed the state senate, this bill will be going before the NY State Assembly during their next session. It is important that our assembly members know that this is an issue that is important to us.
For more information about A. 6334: https://www.nyclu.org/en/legislation/hospital-transparency-and-access-health-care
You can look up who your assembly member is here: https://nyassembly.gov/mem/search/
We recommend the following script: “My name is ____. I am a constituent, and my zip code is ____. I am calling in support of hospital transparency, A. 6334. The bill passed the Senate last session, and it is imperative that it pass both chambers in January. No one should be surprised once they’re at the hospital that their hospital does not provide the car they need. The hospital transparency bill would provide New Yorkers with the tools they need to identify whether their local hospital provides the care they seek before they’re admitted, and it would provide New York with the tools to identify care deserts – communities where certain types of care are unavailable – throughout the state. Given the fall of Roe and the attacks on gender affirming care nationwide, it is more important than ever that New Yorkers, as well as all people who come to New York to seek care, know in advance which hospitals provide the care they need.
3. Join our mass meetings!
Want to get more involved? Everyone interested in the fight for abortion access is welcome to come join us for our meetings every other Friday at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls at 6 pm. We have action groups focusing on rural abortion access, LGBTQ+ solidarity, supporting frontline efforts in other states, and fighting against crisis pregnancy centers which lure people in but then do not provide abortion services. The next mass meeting is scheduled for September 9, at 6 pm.