Future Choices in District 35
Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Westchester County Legislator
Andrea Stewart-Cousins joined Future Choices in October 2006 to explain what she means when she asserts that "Albany is still broken." Decrying the failure of the New York State Senate to protect women's reproductive rights, she points out that maintenance of a woman’s right to choose has always been central to her philosophy as a parent and as a public official. Elected to the Senate in November 2006 Ms. Stewart-Cousins says she will continue to work with her colleagues to ensure passage of bills like the Healthy Teens Act, which has died in the Senate in previous years.
- Biographical information about Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
- The Health Teens Act would would establish "an age-appropriate sex education grant program through the department of health." Sponsored in the Assembly by Richard Gottfried, the bill has been passed and subsequently referred to the Senate, where it has been sponsored by George Winner and co-sponsored by Suzi Oppenheimer. As of April 1 action is pending in the Senate Health Committee.
- In his July 19 op-ed article in the New York Times, Samuel G. Freedman strongly criticized the New York Senate for its failure to enact the Healthy Teens Act in 2006. See: "Muzzling Sex Education On Anything but Abstinence."
- When exploring the life's challenges facing single teen mothers, Ms. Stewart-Cousins cited a book which a friend recently gave her, The Girls Who Went Away. Written very movingly by Ann Fessler (herself an adopted child) it is available in local bookstores and is riveting to read. The review from Publishers Weekly says, in part,
"Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to keep the baby," says Joyce, in a story typical of the birth mothers, mostly white and middle-class, who vent here about being forced to give up their babies for adoption from the 1950s through the early '70s. They recall callous parents obsessed with what their neighbors would say; maternity homes run by unfeeling nuns who sowed the seeds of lifelong guilt and shame; and social workers who treated unwed mothers like incubators for married couples.
- Andrea says she is keenly disappointed, too, that the Senate failed again in 2006 to pass the Unintended Pregnancy Prevention Act, which would enable women to obtain emergency contraception (EC) from pharmacists and nurses with a specific prescription and mandates all insurance policies that cover prescription contraception to cover emergency contraception when provided by a non-patient specific prescription or over-the-counter. This bill has passed the Assembly in each of the past four years, but it never made it to the Senate floor in 2006. It has been reintroduced by Amy Paulin in 2007 and is pending action in both houses.