Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $10 Million Awarded in the First Round of Abortion Provider Support Fund

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced $10 million awarded in the first round of the Abortion Provider Support Fund to 13 programs, covering 63 sites. The Governor also launched a series of reproductive health care roundtables, beginning with today's roundtable with downstate awardees, to discuss the needs and experiences of providers and how New York is confronting challenges and protecting access post-Roe. Applications for round two of funding will open next week. For the second phase, $15 million will be awarded to a broader array of programs, including independent clinics.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to acknowledge the presence of Dr. Mary Bassett and thank her once again for her leadership on everything since she took office. It's been extraordinary to work with you, Dr. Bassett. And we're going to be talking about COVID in a couple minutes, monkeypox as well as abortion.

So you certainly have a lot on your plate, but we truly appreciate all the work that you do. Caitlin Doyle is also here, the Director of Women's Health Programs for Long Island Jewish Medical Center. You'll be hearing from her as well as the room filled up with amazing individuals who represent whether it's Planned Parenthood or health care organizations that are providing abortion.

We just had a very productive round table and I'll recap that in a few minutes. So, that's what we're going to talk about. But first, COVID continues to be ever present. This is something that we had talked about in the past about doing everything we can to be prepared for new variants. And we just had a meeting on that issue as well this morning as we're having regular updates on what is going on the new very, very contagious variants. BA.4 and BA.5 are very much around us.

Now you look at the numbers. We track the numbers all the time. We are at about 33 per a hundred thousand. Which is not that much higher than it was a month ago, 26 a month ago. Here in New York City though, it's 45 per a hundred thousand and a month ago it was 38. So we're still trending. We'd gone down, going back up again a little bit, but we also track hospitalizations. I mean I want to know how many people are being hospitalized. How severe is this? Is it a nuisance? Is it a real problem? Are people dying? Are people being hospitalized?

And so the number on the hospitalization, the 70 average for hospitalization, really is just about what it was a month ago. It's about 11.2 percent right now. 10.6 here in the city and it's in the state, so we're not doing poorly in that front. And thankfully the deaths remain very low and that is something that is important to us.

So again, we know what to do. Vaccinations and about 78 percent of New Yorkers of the total population eligible are fully vaccinated. Always can do more on the booster front. What is your excuse? They're available. 53 percent of New Yorkers have been totally boosted. So we've made real efforts. We've made real progress, but I'm also going to talk about the fact that treatment is important as well.

I mean, people who contract COVID also are eligible to receive therapeutics now. That is a good thing. We didn't have that early on. So to just lessen the severity, lessen your symptoms and just get you through it, we have therapeutics, but a lot of people have barriers. They don't know where to get them.

You know, what is this all about? And a lot of people just don't have a regular health care provider in the state. So yesterday, proud that we launched a new free hotline, so every New Yorker can contact one of our treatment centers here in New York City. You have a phone number: 212-COVID19. That's clever and outside of New York City: 888-TREAT-NY. So, that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So if you test positive, we have a lot of test kits. I know because I ordered 92 million of them. We have plenty of test kits in our state. We also want to let you know that there are therapeutics that can help you get through that. That's what I availed myself of and I didn't have too many symptoms when I tested positive on Mother's Day this year. I'll never forget that. So we have the phone numbers for you there.

And also I want to thank New York City Health and Hospitals for their partnership. We're also launching a media effort, $1 million to paid media effort to let New Yorkers know the facts about COVID still. Don't be immune to this. It's still ever present. Also, the options they have for treatment, it's running in English and in Spanish TV, radio, online. So we're reminding everybody it is summer time. The numbers tend to go down a little bit more in the summer when everybody's outside and fall and school are just around the corner.

So parents, things have changed since your kids may have been in school. And now children five and up can get that shot. We're working on younger children. So please, please get your kids vaccinated before they go back to school in the fall. We just want to get through less disruptions than we've been experiencing. And so, it's still with us. We're on top of it. We're not changing our policies at this time, always reserving the right to do so. I will always reserve the right, but right now we just want to have people be smart and would recommend in various settings, including transportation, we want everyone to wear a mask on their public transportation - on the trains and on the subways. So let's stay on top of that.

And then of course, when we're dealing with COVID, our Department of Health isn't busy enough. We're now dealing with, as we've talked about for a couple weeks now, monkeypox. Total cases statewide is 238. They are very, very, very concentrated in New York City. Here's our website to get information. But New York City has 223 of the 238 cases. Westchester has about seven. Sullivan, Chemung, Rockland, Suffolk has four. The first three have one. Nassau County has one. And so, it's something we're concerned about. It's rare. It's a viral infection that does not usually cause serious illnesses. Rarely fatal it, but it's very unpleasant. You can end up with permanent scarring as a result, extremely painful. So at this time, no deaths have been reported from monkeypox. We hope that stays the way it is. But I did talk to the White House about this, Dr. Jha, who's leading the response for the white house and I said, we need more treatment.

We need more vaccine allocations here in New York State. I pointed out that we have vulnerable populations. We have a lot of activity out in places like Long Island, Fire Island. We have a lot of concern about some of our neighborhoods. So last week the federal government gave us 8,915, I believe it was, they gave us case and I said, okay, we have a large population, but they're limited as well. Apparently there's one provider. It's in Europe, supply chain issues. So I heard all about it, but they expect to get a much larger supply in the near future. I think it was a quarter of a million doses for them.

And I'm pleased to announce today that the DOH will be distributing an additional 5,180 vaccine doses. About 1,750 will go to Suffolk County and I know Northwell has set up a facility on Fire Island. Appointments are currently full we're told, but we encourage local residents to keep checking. About 14 - almost 1,500 to Westchester. 1,200 to Nassau and 620 to Saratoga County.

So we're tracking our vulnerable areas. We're getting the doses there based on smart allocation, but we truly, truly wish we had more. You know New York City received their own allocation from the CDC about 14,500. That's good news. And I know that New York City will be releasing more appointments at one o'clock today.

So, if you've been waiting, check in at one o'clock, so that'll allow more people to you know have access to it. But if you, you know, if you suspect you have it, make sure you see your provider. It is contagious. And we also launched a public relations or public education campaign about this. But what I've conveyed to the White House is that we've received about 14 percent of doses allocated nationwide, but we have more than 14 percent of the nation's cases.

So we're going to continue to press for more doses so we can continue to be on top of this as well. Thank you, Dr. Bassett, for, yet another health care crisis, but you're up for it. And I thank you and your entire team for what you do.

So, speaking of health care crises, this one's hard to still talk about. The realization that with the reversal of Roe v. Wade just a short time ago, they stripped away the rights of millions of women.

It is hard for me to stand here as the grandmother of a two-month-old and realize that my granddaughter has fewer rights than I had. That was never the trajectory of our country. Rights were always expanded, and now we have a different dynamic. So, but we fight back. New York State, we're not going backwards.

And I made a promise to New Yorkers and women all across this country: Any woman in need of health care, reproductive health care, will be welcome with open arms here in New York State. And I intend to keep that promise. You know, we talk about our history. 1970, three years before the rest of the nation, a Republican Legislature, I love to point that out, a Republican-dominated Legislature, Republican governor, ensured that women had the right to reproductive decision-making over their own bodies. They had control back in 1970, three years before the rest of the nation. In that time, women across the nation in search of health care, reproductive health care, came to New York.

We had over 400,000 abortions provided, two-thirds of which were the people out of the state. So, why do I tell you that? Well, fast forward to 2022. We may be in a similar situation. In fact, we are in a similar situation where, as we call around and talk to providers around the state places like Western New York are seeing a major increase in women from Pennsylvania, which has more restrictions, Ohio, whose seeing a surge of cases from elsewhere. They're coming now to our providers, and we saw this, we knew this would happen not just from 1970, just common sense, told us they're going to come here. And so right before as I mentioned before this press event, I had the opportunity to meet with some of the leaders in this.

And we talked about their challenges and the conversations they're having with providers and their contemporaries in other states. And there's a lot of fear out there, a lot of anxiety and fear of legal prosecution. So, we've raised some issues. We talked about some issues about training, you know, for someone being trained in the medical profession, in some of those states, part of their residency training means that they would have to be, you know, performing abortions, have exposed contact to actual live patients, not just in a textbook and you know, what role can New York State play in helping continue people's education?

What else, what other role can we play in people who now, and there are cases where people have had to close their practices in other states, because there's not going to be any more patients bringing them, welcoming them here to State of New York. Are there barriers to that? If there are barriers, what are they, how we get through them, certification from State Education Department conversations with them about how we can reduce some of the barriers for doctors who are in other states that are seeking to continue their work.

So, these are the individuals on the front lines, and I thank you for what you've done and we're going to continue the conversations. We had our first approach, but we're going to continue refining New York State's response in light of more information and more data and making sure that we are always here to ensure that we're doing everything possible.

And part of that was funding. We announced this early on before the decision was clear, we saw the, you know, their intent was telegraphed with the leaked memo. We had over $35 million and that's from Commissioner Bassett's funds, 10 million of which is for security.

That's a no brainer. You know, we know vulnerabilities, I'm from Buffalo. You know, Dr. Barnett Slepian is still very much in the hearts and minds of people who live in Western New York. So we know there's vulnerabilities at facilities, people's homes. And so, we're prepared to protect people with security. $25 million also to launch the abortion provider support fund, the largest of its kind in the nation.

And so, our conversation today was about how this can be used to help people. So today we are announcing the first $10 million of actual grants to the providers, where they're going, and those will go to 13 organizations with 63 facilities and clinics across the state. And many of them were represented here today, talking about how they're going to be able to do more hiring and expand their operations and how they're anticipating this.

So now it's official. As of today, the first $10 million is out there. You know, we want them to hire more people. And as I heard today, you know, great appreciation for this funding, but we appreciate what you're doing and it's a shame we needed to do this, but we did it. And again, that's part of our effort to be proactive and have provider, you know, provider-centered care work that's being done so importantly.

So we're going to continue doing that. Dr. Bassett, I thank you for holding the roundtables around the State as well. We're going to get you all over, getting a grasp on what the localities need. Again, some of those that are the border communities are going to see more, but other ones might be flying in, you know, through our airport.

So then you're going to see more of a concentration in New York City. You, so we'll be monitoring what's happening as some of the states that have trigger laws that have not gone to effect yet. So, we're not, we're just seeing, we're at the cusp of this. We're at the very beginning of what we believe will be a major influx of people in search of women's health care and so we are also going to want to continue expanding. So we're going to be announcing, $15 million will be announced in our phase two of the fund. These will be given to independent clinics. The first wave was $10 million to organizations we already had contracts with. So, it was easier for us to allocate the money, but obviously we do this correctly, there's contracts involved.

So, we're going to be opening up to solicitations next week. So we want to get that word out. And I mentioned the security grants as well. So, that's what we're going to keep doing, focusing on our providers, but also, just to recap, we're working to help women in every way we can.

Part of that was enshrining abortion rights in our state constitution. The first steps were taken along those lines. Here's the Executive Chamber calling upon, while they are considering the gun legislation, another whole topic. We'll be talking about that later this week. I took the opportunity while we had the legislature convened for an extraordinary session, that's what it's called, an extraordinary session, to consider this amendment. So we passed they passed the Equality Amendment and that'll address health care and reproductive autonomy. And these rights will remain. This was really important to all of us.

So I'm also partnering with the federal government, making sure that President Biden knows our concerns. We just did a call with him two weeks ago now, and he wanted key governors to give a reflection of what we're up to, and also to hear what he's doing. And I'm glad to see that president is directing HHS to consider providing an increase in access for over-the-counter contraception. It's shocking to realize you can't get them over the counter, and in consultation with Dr. Bassett, I'm here to say that New York State 100 percent fully supports over-the-counter contraception. Let's be sensible about this. Let's make this easier.

And also medical abortion pills, we'll be increasing access to them as well. So my staff has another follow-up call with the White House just today. So we're fully supportive of these efforts. Also that's another reason why we made sure abortion was covered under insurance in New York State. These are not free to perform, we want to make sure the insurance companies know their responsibility, as well as, creating our, our protections for doctors. There will be cases that come when aggressive individuals from other states, especially those that have the private right of action, which is still surreal to anticipate, that there could be vigilantes out, hunting down women, and that trail may lead them to New York. It may lead them to one of our providers, and our law, as written, will protect them from extradition. We'll protect their rights. But again, this is unchartered territory, my friends it's unchartered territory.

So we'll be finding out what they do and be ready to counter. So I anticipate this is going to go on for a long time. But I want you to know, you know, we're going to continue our marketing campaign, so people understand it's still legal here in New York. Talking to providers, there are people coming in saying, "Oh, I heard abortion was now illegal." So one would think, why we have to do this in New York? Because people don't know they're watching the news, "Roe V. Wade is overturned," so you can understand where they're coming from.

So we're out there again, reminding you that it's safe, legal, accessible, always. And that's part of our public awareness campaign that is out there. So, there's other options: take care of the providers; remind people of their rights; take care of the insurance; take care of coverage; and to the businesses who have employees in those states, whether they're New York City-based, New York State-based, they have branches, operations elsewhere, or they're headquartered elsewhere, and all of a sudden having an awakening, I'll call it. That they actually have, maybe, a certain percentage of their workforce are women, who, all of a sudden, have no rights to determine their own health care decisions. So I wrote an Op-Ed back May 12th, I wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, encouraging these businesses to rethink where they are. Do you really want to be in that kind of state that is hostile to, not just women's rights, but telegraphed by Clarence Thomas, possibly hostile to LGBTQ rights, and marriage equality, and even contraception. So that's not us standing here thinking of the world's worst case scenarios, that is written by a Supreme Court Justice. So that is the world we're living in here, and we need to be prepared.

So I put the message out to businesses that you're going to have problems with your workforce if you don't have these services available, or you want to just come on back to New York, we'll take good care of you. So we did an Op-Ed. We actually published a full page yet in the Wall Street Journal, May 16th, I said, "This is a statement of our values." This was in the newspaper, "And here's a phone number, Empire State Development, give us a call. We'd like to talk to you as you go forward," because you know, short of a change in the Supreme Court, and they're all pretty young, I don't know if we're going to see this change at the federal level anytime soon, and what could actually happen at the federal level? I'm not going to ever feel like I was Chicken Little, saying the sky is falling, because I said that about abortion rights in 2016 that this could happen. And it was like, "Ugh, really?" It happened. Outcome of a presidential election, we end up Supreme Court with justices that are hostile to human rights. So we saw this coming, but this is going to be with us for a while. I don't see this changing for a long time, and there could also be a national ban on abortion. And that is what we have to be talking about now.

Again, not us trying to come up with scary doomsday scenarios that, Mitch McConnell has telegraphed to us. So that is what happens in elections, starting as early as four months from now. So, New Yorkers, Americans, be aware, be aware. If you want to live in a country that is hostile to your rights, don't complain about it. You don't like that idea, do something about it.

And so we'll be talking about that as well. So companies that are enlightened, we encourage you to come here, know that your employees have rights here, that they maybe not have all their rights. And so, it is a frightening time, but it's in our DNA as New Yorkers to fight. We're hardwired to fight. We fight back, we fight back hard. We anticipate scenarios. We prepare for them, we adapt to changing circumstances, and that's why I'm going to keep in touch with the providers and people all across the state to hear, what are you seeing on the ground? What else do you need from us? How bad is it? And what are you hearing from across this country? Because New York state will always be a safe harbor. So with that, I will be happy to introduce Dr. Mary Bassett to talk to us about the work that she's doing. And again, my gratitude to her is undying for what she has had to step into, and the work that she does.