Rights Groups Speak Out On Roe V. Wade Anniv.

NEW YORK - With the war on abortion rights continuing to escalate, a Community Speak-Out for Reproductive Freedom will be held on Saturday, January 22, 2011, from 12pm-2pm, at Dr. Emily Women's Health Center, 560 Southern Boulevard, South Bronx. 
 
The date marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973 which granted U.S. women the right to abortion.  The Speak-Out will emphasize the importance of the work of clinics such as Dr. Emily’s, which provides abortions as well as other affordable healthcare regardless of immigration status, and which has been targeted by anti-abortion rights protesters in recent years.  In addition, the Speak-Out will address further goals in the reproductive justice movement, including the right to childcare, comprehensive sex education, a living wage, and contraception, and an end to forced sterilization.
 
Says Emily Woo Yamasaki, the Organizer of NYC Radical Women, “On January 22nd, feminists are taking to the streets to say that a woman’s access to safe, legal abortion and freedom from forced sterilization are as fundamental as her right to breathe the air­without economic coercion created by poverty or employment and wage discrimination.”
 

Community organizers, abortion providers, and others in the movement will speak on the continued struggle for reproductive justice. Attendees will be encouraged to take to the stage to raise their own demands and share their own stories.    
 
The Speak-Out is sponsored by Radical Women and New York Coalition for Abortion Clinic Defense (NYCACD). It is endorsed by Freedom Socialist Party; National Organization for Women (NOW) – NY State, Brooklyn/Queens, Young Feminist Task Force; National Women’s Liberation; Nieves Ayress Moreno-Trabajadoras por la Paz de NY; Socialist Core; World Can't Wait.

Radical Women (RW) is a national socialist feminist, grassroots activist organization that provides a radical voice within the feminist movement, a feminist voice within the Left, and trains women to be leaders in the movements for social and economic justice.

New York Coalition for Abortion Clinic Defense (NYCACD) is a coalition committed to overturning misconceptions about women and abortion; to combat the threat of inadequate healthcare and the ways these contribute to the restrictions of a woman’s control over her body; and to advocate for, and defend, a woman’s right to choose. NYCACD is active now in the South Bronx at Dr. Emily Women’s Health Clinic to counteract the daily physical and emotional assault on patients and staff.