National Organization for Women-New York State Mourns the Loss of an Abortion Provider

ALBANY, NY (06/01/2009)(readMedia)-- It is with great sympathy that we at NOW-NYS learn about the murder of a dedicated courageous women's health care provider, Dr. George Tiller. NOW-NYS President Marcia Pappas notes that "such acts as this belie the anti-choice movement's adoption of the term 'right-to-life.'" He was a courageous physician who understood women's need for access to comprehensive reproductive services. According to a press release by National NOW President Kim Gandy, "June 1 will be observed as Day of Mourning for Dr. Tiller, as well as a National Day of Commitment for all who believe abortion must remain both safe and legal."

NOW-NY State's Marcia Pappas continues that "in the name of the late Dr. Tiller, we urge that all rights-minded Americans fight to protect a woman's right a to safe and legal abortion." She suggests the support of two specific bills now pending in NY State, these being the Women's Reproductive Domain Act (A3607-Eddington) and the Governor's Reproductive Health Act.

Pappas explains that in Baird v. Eisenstadt, the 1972 US Supreme Court ruling legalizing birth control for unmarried Americans, Justice Brennan wrote: "If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married, or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

Pappas summarizes: "The National Organization for Women demands that women have the right to self-determination. Women should be recognized as fully autonomous persons, entirely competent to make decisions about their own reproductive lives. These decisions should be honored as final and supreme. Because the fetus coexists simultaneously with a woman's reproductive makeup, no separation exists between the woman and the contents of her womb. All rights of the embryo and fetus should be determined by the woman in question, and any form of government intervention is a form of discrimination.

No longer should institutions and legislation force women to populate the world with unwanted children, and to give birth against their wills. There are great social and psychological ramifications for enforcing gender-biased laws that destroy civil and natural rights.

Because women must have the right to care for their own bodies, NOW-NYS will continue its vital work. We of NOW are FOR LIFE. We are for the lives of millions of women in New York State and around this country.