Gov. Maura Healey arrived on Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday, with her first public appearance as governor at Health Imperatives in Tisbury.
The Health Imperatives visit was one of several stops in the governor’s schedule on the Vineyard. Also on the schedule was an affordable housing development roundtable in West Tisbury that was closed to the press, and a visit to the Island Food Pantry in Oak Bluffs.
At Health Imperatives, Healey took a tour of the facilities and heard from Health Imperatives CEO Julia Kehoe about the issues that Islanders face, such as a lack of insurance and housing.
“It’s a beautiful facility, it’s a welcoming facility and it’s exactly the kind of place so many communities need,” Healey said.
Health Imperatives received over $700,000 in state funding late last year to become the first abortion services provider on the Island. Medical assisted abortions were planned to begin in July.
“In just a matter of days, we’ll offer medication abortion here and in Hyannis, Nantucket, Wareham, New Bedford, Plymouth, and Brockton,” Kehoe said Thursday, saying that southern Massachusetts will no longer be an “abortion desert.”
“We’re increasing access to a critical health service that for too long, too many people have had to travel too far to receive,” Kehoe said.
State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, D-Falmouth, and State Senator Julian Cyr, D-Truro, said this was the first time they welcomed a governor to Martha’s Vineyard during their tenures in the state legislature. Both underscored the importance of Health Imperative in providing reproductive care to residents of the Cape and Islands. Other facilities are planned on the Cape and Nantucket.
Healey’s visit to the health clinic on the Vineyard comes near the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban and a narrow vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision that protected an individual’s freedom to have an abortion.
Healey called the Supreme Court’s choice a “terrible, misguided decision.” She said many people are scared because of legislation being passed in “too many places” that hinder reproductive care, access to abortion, and gender-affirming care.
“These are incredibly harmful, cruel policies and decisions that have such a detrimental impact, particularly those who are poor, those people of color, and so many other [vulnerable] populations,” she said.
“I have said that we will continue to be, in Massachusetts, a beacon of hope for patients and providers here in Massachusetts and around this country,” the Governor said, underscoring the legislation Massachusetts passed to protect abortion accessibility.
Healey has made providing abortion accessibility a key part of her tenure. In April, Healey issued an executive order to protect access to mifepristone, medication that had been prescribed to safely terminate pregnancies, after a Texas federal judge’s decision blocked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug — a decision that is being appealed by the U.S. government. The state also stockpiled the drug in case of a possible shortage.
During the visit, Healey reaffirmed her commitment to providing abortion accessibility.
“Whatever it takes, whatever we need to do as a state to support access to reproductive healthcare — to health care, which I think is a human right— we are going to do,” Healey said.
After the visiting Health Imperatives, Healey attended an affordable housing roundtable in West Tisbury, which was closed to the press. She told reporters after the event that she was “impressed” by the agreement among Vineyard towns. Healey said that hearing about the rise in housing insecurity left her “all the more committed” to creating affordable housing in the state.
Staff members Mary Stycos and Merrick Carreiro showed Healey around the facility. Island Food Pantry, which operates under the Island Grown Initiative, has a registration list of more than 4,200 people. Currently, the pantry sees approximately 2,100 people a month.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the pantry’s client base to double. Upon hearing this information, Healey said the numbers were “unbelievable.”
Senior programs director Noli Taylor explained that running a food pantry on an island comes with a unique set of challenges. “We look at food from a lens of climate,” Taylor said. If the weather is too bad for boats, the pantry will be unable to receive a food shipment that particular day.
Additionally, the island is home to many undocumented immigrants who do not qualify for food assistance such as SNAP. This, according to pantry staff, adds an additional hurdle in combating food insecurity on the island.
Healey said she found the pantry workers “inspiring.”
“Thank you for doing what you do with folks that are really vulnerable,” Healey said. “We want to do anything and all that we can as an administration.”
After the pantry, Healey visited the PA Club in Oak Bluffs.
Mia Vittemberga contributed to this report; Adarsh Bhat compiled the video.
How many people who have had an abortion are pro abortion?
Every single woman I personally know who has had an abortion is pro-abortion.
That video is chilling. The smiling faces in support of abortion is frightening. Regardless of how you feel about abortion under no circumstance is it a procedure that should be gleeful. Sickening that we have these folks in our community.
I don’t know John. In 1975 my then girlfriend was quite happy after she had an abortion.
She referred to it as a “parasite”.
We were in no position to have a child.
In school, heavy into drugs, poor and irresponsible.
Her pregnancy was certainly nothing to be gleeful about.
And while we weren’t “gleeful”, we were appreciative that some overbearing religious zealots couldn’t interfere in her personal and private decision.
As for the video.
When Healy is speaking about abortion people don’t appear gleeful.
I do see people at some conservative events and rallies appear to be quite gleeful when you know who drops one liners about “beating the crap” out of someone, keeping starving people out of our country, or brags about separating families and locking children in cages, or mocks a disabled person.
The videos of those mobs gleefully cheering is chilling.
Celebrating the opening of a health care facility is not.
Quite happy over the abortion of an innocent human being referred to as a parasite? Your remarks about what is said at “some” conservative rallies? How many have you attended? Celebrating the opening of a “health care” facility that actually finds no issue with murdering innocent life? Sad my brother, so sad.
Greg have you ever attended any drag shows? If not you should have no opinion about what goes on with them. But about those rallies and hate festivals , even the right wing media shows the hateful rhetoric. Do you deny that the leading presidential candidate of the Republican Party said those things? Sorry the conservatives are proud of that stuff. I am ashamed every time a liberal says something like that. Conservatives are gleeful. Shame on them
Don, Drag Shows? I made no mention nor opinion about such. As I am considered a Conservative I find no pride or glee in the ‘stuff ‘ you mentioned and feel that you perhaps as a ‘Liberal Democrat’? should clean house before throwing your peaceful and loving stones!
Greg– my point was that while I never attended one of the Nuremberg rallies, I know what they were about. I did not have to be there to know the enthusiasm of the participants.
If you imply that my opinion of “conservative” right wing rallies in not legitimate because i have never been to one, I can imply that your opinion of drag shows is not legitimate if you have never been to one.
Fair enough ?
Greg, human beings breath air.
A fetus does not.
They probably say the same about you.
They are smiling because they are finally getting to make available reproductive healthcare on the island. And they have every right to smile about that, and the fact that they are helping women exercise their right to bodily autonomy, free from government pronouncements or interference. They are protecting the most important part of the equation – the living, breathing woman, an actual person.
“Actual person”, interesting term. I guess that’s what the whole issue is about. To me if something has a heartbeat, it exists.
Just curious…do elementary school kids who get gunned down have a heartbeat? Because you “pro-life” types do not want to infringe on your “rights” to have weapons of war…when you start lamenting unarmed citizens being murdered by cops, when you decry stand your ground laws that allow innocent unarmed people to be murdered, then come talk to us about how much you care about “life”…when you say, let’s welcome immigrants (they have heartbeats, don’t they?), we may take you seriously…but it’s really about controlling women’s bodies or else you would be the first one to demand an assault weapons ban…as for my opinion, I don’t care what you consider a fetus…if it’s inside the women’s body, she gets to decide…period…
Imperious puerile juxta positional analogizing.
I don’t think I have mentioned anything about guns….it’s weird you’d bring that up. I also never mentioned that I’m “pro-life” or pro gun. I’m also very much in favor of the death penalty for murderers. My point is decent humans would not be gleeful when a baby is killed nor gleeful when a murderer is killed by the state but we must acknowledge in both instances it is the killing of a human being. Anyone who is pleased by either situation has no soul.
John according to your logic it seems you are saying the people who celebrated the end of WW2 were doing so because we killed lots of people.
Celebrating the end of a war is celebrating the end of killing.
Exactly– after the abortion , there is no need to “kill” anything else.
John, to me , if (pronoun of choice) breaths air it has the right to exist.
Body growths have no right to exist.
Warts, moles, breasts, butts, hair, testicles, ovaries, uteruses and fetuses, kidneys, arms, legs and skin blotches are a matter of choice!
You should really read what you wrote again and then reconsider your thoughts.
January 6th was pretty chilling to me. How about you?
John, the glee is about a woman being able to make decision about what remains in her body.
It is not John’s decision!
Are you serious? What remains in her body is a life. As I have said I support her decision to end that life but it must be acknowledged that is what is being done. It’s not “reproductive health”. It’s ending a life. I can be okay with it as long as we all admit what it is, tragic for all women and men involved. Don’t forget the man should have a voice here. It was a mutual agreement.
John, what remains in a woman’s body is the woman’s choice.
Not the man who deposited the sperm.
How many women feel that their abortions were tragic?
Raped women?
“the man should have a voice here” when they stop raping. .
Weird how people who claim to be “pro life” are also pro war and pro gun. I guess their so called sanctity of life ends at birth. Height of hypocrisy.
They aren’t pro life, they’re anti woman authoritarians.
It’s simple really. You either believe in freedom, or you don’t. Sometimes freedom doesn’t align with your personal beliefs. Freedom means the state can’t force you to give birth. If you believe the state has this power, you must also accept forced sterilizations, forced abortions and forced lobotomies, to name just a few of the possibilities.
This is one of the most cogent statements I have read. Thankyou.
Forced and coerced injections should be added to your list in order for your point to be coherent.
Good point. Where was freedom of choice about a person’s healthcare when the government was forcing us to get a vaccine or they’d lose their job. More importantly a vaccine that was untested and didn’t really work.
Who was the hero that fast tracked that vaccine? And how can you possibly say it didn’t work? I know you have a tendency to ignore facts, but come on.
John– you should look up the definitions of the words “forced” and “coerced”
Not a single citizen of the U.S was forced to get a vaccine.
I have seen many instances where radical right wing opponents of the vaccines have compared the free and voluntary vaccination programs compared to the nazi incineration camps of the Holocaust.
Note seconds 39-42 in this video. And what do you think is the message of the dog whistle images on the “cabals” ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNt4NIQ7FTA
Let me ask you, if you want to get a job working as a school bus driver, are you “forced” or “coerced” into taking a drug test ?
The fourth amendment of the constitution prohibits the United States government from conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures.” In general, this means police cannot search a person or their property without a warrant or probable cause. It has certainly been argued that the internal contents of your body cannot be searched without probable cause.
Clearly, one does not have to produce evidence that they are guilty of a crime– The 5th amendment has shielded criminals, mob bosses, and one former president, who pleaded it over 440 times .
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-deposed-ny-ag-civil-probe-business-practices-rcna42355
So then let’s say you are already driving the school bus, and you refuse to take the pee test– should you just be allowed to continue your job, or does public safety override your private “rights” ?
If your kid rode the bus, and the bus driver refused to submit to a drug test, would you defend the driver and “force” your kid to ride the bus ?
We had more than a million Americans die from COVID in under 2 years.
That’s about 25 times the number of deaths caused by commercial drivers of planes, trains, boats, trucks and busses over a 10 year period.
And I do wonder whether I was “forced” or “coerced” to join the military. My draft lottery number was 113 —they took up to 125 for my age group.
Many people were forced to take vaccines or lose their jobs and we later found out that the non vaccine takers were not a threat to others. But we were repeatedly told that the vaccine helps save the lives of others in the community. Forced or coerced is the same thing if the reason for it is false.
Andy–when did we find out that people who refused to take the vaccine were not a threat to others ?
Quite the contrary actually– as the pandemic was winding down due to the widespread vaccination programs .we saw that the great majority of cases and deaths occurred in the unvaccinated population. That is especially true if you look at the respective percentages.
While there were of course some cases in vaccinated people they were at drastically lower rates.
COVID is a disease that gets transferred from person to person, you know.
Nothing in life is guaranteed, but if reduce the number of sick people , you reduce the number of transmissions.
Pretty simple logic, backed up by solid facts.
I’m not going to bother to put up links to prove it.
How about you put up some verifiable peer reviewed studies to prove me wrong ?
I would be delighted to see them…
And I already saw that debunked one in the U.K.
You gotta do better than that.
This is about women and girls deciding when and if to continue a pregnancy, a human right where the primacy of the pregnant person is greater than that of an embryo or fetus. As always, though, so many men are convinced of their right to control women and their families. We don’t need you as religious or morality consultants. We will make this decision on our own, and in my experience the most common post-abortion reaction is relief, not regret. Thank you, Don Keller, for sharing your story. I wish there were more men who would do so. The decades-long pro-choice fight might have been completely unnecessary if, since 1973, millions of men had told society about how a partner’s abortion decision let them live their own lives without unplanned fatherhood, allowing them to finish high school/go to college/move across the country/travel/work without restriction and decide when, how, and with whom to have their own family, in their own time. Thank you, Governor Healey, for coming to MV and helping all of us access complete reproductive healthcare.