Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Agenda to Affirm Abortion Rights in New York; Stands With Senator Gillibrand to Fight for Reproductive Rights

In response to anti-abortion laws in Texas and across the country, Governor Kathy Hochul today announced an agenda to affirm abortion rights and cement New York's status as a place to welcome women seeking abortion care. Governor Hochul was joined by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to lay out their combined efforts to fight for reproductive rights. As part of these efforts, the Governor is directing State agencies to coordinate a statewide public information campaign, including the development of a patient bill of rights, in coordination with stakeholders. This campaign will help women know their rights and legal protections and ensure this information is accessible and widely available. The Governor also directed the Department of Health to take immediate action to develop and widely distribute modern and comprehensive provider guidance on the right to provide abortion care and to ensure updates to existing regulations are adopted so that medication abortion can be more easily accessed during telehealth visits.

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 are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Thank you, my friends, Alexis, thank you for reminding us how forward thinking and extraordinary women of New York always have been, which is why we are drawn to this site. A place that many of us in this audience came to last August 26 to do the official unveiling. And it was not meant to be a stationary object that people walk past and say, that looks nice. It's supposed to be a place of inspiration and a place of motivation. And to remind us that yes, in our DNA as New Yorkers, as New York women in particular, we carry their weight on our shoulders, the burdens that they had to undertake to fight for women's rights back in 1848 and in 1917, to make sure that we had the right to vote three years ahead of the rest of the nation.

And again, we always liked to be three years ahead. We are exactly three years ahead. When New York State in 1970 enacted rights to a safe, legal abortion, and the rest of the nation paid attention. The people that are joined with me here, these are today's leaders. These are today's champions, and I want you to celebrate them with me as I call out their names and recognize the organizations that they're with because we don't get anywhere as an individual in this state. We do it collaboratively, collectively, back to these brave women all the way to 2021.

I'll be introducing my great partner in government, someone who embraced me when I landed in Congress and she was our senator. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. I want to thank her. You're going to hear from her in a couple of minutes, but Senator Gillibrand, I wanted to recognize you.

You also will be hearing from, some of our speakers will be Robin Chappelle Golston will be speaking, as we've heard her many, many times firing us all up. She's powerful. We look forward to working with her.

Dr. Meera Shah will be speaking. My former roommate in Congress and dear friend, Congressman Carolyn Maloney, who is an incredible leader, will be speaking as well. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, again, another history-making friend of mine. We have a lot of friends making some history there, my friend. Thank you for your incredible leadership. It's been, it has been a joy to work with you. Let me say that again. It has been a joy, that is very true. And Pascale Bernard would give her remarks as well.

But also I just want to recognize some of the groups that are here and you all came out here today. It's a beautiful day. Our Commissioner of Parks and Historic Preservation, Erik Kulleseid is here. Erik, I see you in the back there. Thanks Pat Elam, the President of the Monumental Women who created this statute. We love it. We love it. Thank you very much. The Central Park Conservancy is here.

I know we've got some other elected. Oh, here's our other electives. Oh, my gosh. Also we have Christine Quinn here, the CEO of Win. We have Judith Kasen-Windsor, Bev Neufeld, Dina Bakst from A Better Balance.

Also my elected friends in the front row here. Liz Krueger, who is one of the authors. She and Assemblymember Glick were the champions of the Reproductive Health Act at a time when people said it could not be done. And we actually had some procedural battles with the other side of the aisle, how nice it was, we no longer have to have those battles, but thank you for being there when things were tough.

And Rebecca Seawright here, I see her. And our great leader from this borough, my friend Gale Brewer. Thank you very much. Thank you. Senator Brad Hoylman is here. Oh, there you are. Okay. I look in the We have Helen Rosenthal, Deborah Glick, Carlina Rivera, Jo Anne Simon, Linda Rosenthal, Helene Weinstein. And if I forgot your name, I owe you a drink.

So, let's get started. We've got some business at hand. We have some visitors. I know I like going out with my friends. It's awesome. It's awesome. My friends, since September when the Supreme Court let stand the Texas travesty on September 1st, we were a little preoccupied with a hurricane hitting at that moment, but I didn't realize it was another hurricane brewing in our nation's capital at that moment as well. And since then, women all across this nation have had to confront the prospect that rights that we just took for granted our entire lives, rights that my grandmother had to fight for, rights that were just starting when my mother was a young woman, rights that were always there when I became a young adult, young woman, and rights that I assume would be there for my now 30-something year old daughter. But all of a sudden that sense of security we once had in our nation has been ripped apart, shredded, the security blanket no longer.

And the reason I love coming to places like this is because just when you think things are darkest before the dawn, New Yorkers stand together. We pulled together and all of you represent thousands more across this state. And that is the power of what we do here. But think about what they did. I guarantee I did not know I was pregnant with my first child at six weeks. I actually went on a whitewater rafting trip, it turns out, at three months because I didn't know I was pregnant. I mean, that is the reality of real people. Okay. We don't always know. So you're denied the choice that should be yours as a woman and something we took for granted by Texas who thinks six weeks is the magic date that you should have been aware, or you should know this and that is grotesquely unfair what they're expecting people to do. And I'm glad the Department of Justice is taking Texas to court. I had a chance to have a brief conversation on Saturday with Merrick Garland, our Attorney General. I said, we're with you. Keep going, fight on.

But it's not just Texas. It's Ohio, it's Mississippi. It's Alabama. All across the nation people are waging this battle. And so who are the warriors in this battle? Yes, it's New York women, once again, to help our sisters across this country. Who don't have the leadership in their state to look out for their rights. And so, yes, I invite them all to move to New York, love to have you come.

But also I want them to know that there's a symbol that they need to look at when they're trying to figure out what to do in their lives. And that symbol has been with us since 1886 in the New York Harbor. That is a strong, powerful woman with her hand up saying, if you've been oppressed anywhere in this world, you come to our harbor. This is the safe Harbor for people suffering from oppression. My friends that oppression, in my judgment, is going on right now in the State of Texas, and our Harbor is open for people to come here and understand that we, we will be there to take care of them and protect them.

So I want to make sure, first of all, that we follow up on the Reproductive Health Act. There are some loose ends that were not attended to, and thank you to the advocates for reminding us of what needed to get done. We want to make sure New York State patients, first of all, and anyone who comes there knows their rights. Sounds simple, but we want to make sure that we have an agenda. And I'm announcing today that we're going to say, if you don't know your rights, you might as well not have these rights, if you don't know them and understand them. So we're going to make sure that we direct all state agencies, I'm doing that right now as we speak, particularly Department of Health, to launch a public information campaign. So New Yorkers and those who come here will know all the rights they have available when it comes to abortion access.

And we're going to work with all of our stakeholders out there. I need you, I need you to help with this. We will create a patient Bill of Rights to distribute in doctor's offices and clinics and other organizations where people need guidance. It'll be in plain clear language and in languages that people understand, no language barriers, and we're going to make sure every single woman in the State of New York knows her rights.

But also, if we're going to be a haven for people from elsewhere, we need to make sure that our healthcare providers are also equipped with the guidance they need. There's been some confusion. They're not always sure about what their rights and obligations are. So I'm also directing the Department of Health to take immediate action, to develop and distribute modern and comprehensive provider guidance on their right to abortion care.

First of all, we'll convene a group of experts. People who know exactly what this should look like, how it should be done, and it'll be shared with providers on webinars and other forms of information. Also, this pandemic showed us the power of telemedicine, and I believe that even after the pandemic is over, we need to make sure, and we're working on this now, that we update regulations so medication abortion can be accessed through telemedicine and I'm directing them to make sure that these updates are done as soon as possible. So they're not just regulations. They come to life and I'll make sure that everyone knows they have these rights.

Lastly, just as we've seen with this pandemic, we're also waging a war against misinformation, which is a polite way of saying lies. And there are social media platforms that have been hijacked and used for this purpose. We saw it as a place where people, so fear, disinformation and affect people's attitudes.

I mean, that's one of the reasons why we have 20% of the population who may never want to get the vaccine because they believe the lies that they read from what they thought was an honest, truthful source, and that was not the case.

We've been here before, in 1970 back when we passed the law, we had over 400,000 people from all over come here, two thirds from out of state, came to our state, so we know people come here.

Fast forward to 2019, we passed the Reproductive Health Act. We analyze all the social media that was going on at that time, from January 1st to March 20th, 2019 four out of 10 top stories receiving the most engagement on Facebook were articles about our very own Reproductive Health Act. And they are from anti-choice news sources that absolutely misrepresented and lied about the bill.

That my friends is what I fear is going to happen again, that disinformation. Imagine an 18 year old girl trying to make a decision that's going to affect her life. She believes that she has the courage to do what she wants to do and say, I'm going to have an abortion, but at the same time, her friends and others are forwarding information and horrible messages and calling her a murderer, what does that do to the psyche of a young woman. It's tormenting and I believe that that has to stop. And I believe that the social media organizations that are out there and I'm asking Facebook, starting today, to help clean up the act. Help us wage a campaign of truths and not lies with respect to what is going on in Texas and what was going on here in the State of New York, because misinformation spread like wildfire.

So we have a letter going to Facebook today. We'll see what they do with it. I'll be watching, and let them know we have expectations. We need them to do more on the vaccine, but they have started, they have to handle the abortion access information as well. So these are troubling times, but we've been through some tough times before and New Yorkers know what to do.

We stand tall, we fight hard and we let people know that we have their backs. You, as I said, do not have the leadership you deserve you take care of that the next election, can't help you there. In the meantime, we have to stop extremists from taking women's rights away that have been protected nationwide, since 1973. I'm going forward, I'm not going back and I'm taking every one of you with me. Thank you my friends.

And another amazing champion for reproductive health and women's rights all around our great Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.