Earlier today, I released my plan to ensure access to women’s health care in Massachusetts and I am excited to add new progressive voices to our team.
Following on last week’s endorsement by the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund, today we announced endorsements from Representative Denise Provost of Somerville and former Representative Carl Sciortino of Medford, Executive Director of the AIDS Action Committee, who joined me in unveiling the plan.
A woman’s freedom to make decisions about her body is a fundamental right and a matter of personal dignity. I am running for Attorney General because I believe that every woman in Massachusetts should have access to reproductive health care, no matter where she works, where she lives, her sexual orientation, or how much she earns.
Reproductive freedom is more than a women’s issue – it’s a family issue and a pocketbook issue. It is vital to our communities and our workforce as more women enter and remain in the workforce, often as the primary wage earners for their families. Family planning is essential to achieving pay equity and professional advancement because it allows women across Massachusetts to stay in school, achieve professional success, and plan their families.
When I worked in the Attorney General’s Office, I fought to protect women’s reproductive rights. I worked with the legislature to pass the Massachusetts Buffer Zone Law, which ensures safe access to reproductive health care centers, and later I helped to enforce the law and defend it in court. I helped challenge regulations promulgated by the Bush administration that would have permitted physicians and other medical professionals to deny contraceptive care to patients and oversaw the early stages of the Commonwealth’s brief arguing against the claim that an employer should be allowed to deny its employees insurance coverage for birth control because of the business owners’ own religious beliefs.
I will lead an office that fights to protect, and expand, the rights of women to make personal decisions about their health. I will do this by protecting access to health centers, shutting down deceptive practices by crisis pregnancy centers, fighting legislative restrictions, guaranteeing universal access to contraception and advocating for comprehensive sexual health education in schools.
I hope you’ll consider my plan and share it with friends. You can read the plan on my website, along with other proposals from the campaign.
1. Are you saying the ACLU and Barney Frank have stood in the way of women’s healthcare?
2. What other roadblocks to women’s healthcare do you see besides the buffer zone issue.
Thank you.
I will hang up and take my answer off air.
Sit down and take a few deep breaths and reflect a bit on the important role Planned Parenthood plays in providing access to health care to low income women. It’s far more than reproductive medicine.
it seems like a stretch to say:
when the follow up was specific to the exact example within the post to which EB3 wanted to question.
The title is misleading. You’re only discussing reproductive health care, and say nothing about the dismal state of everyone’s health care in general. Perhaps you’d care to address single-payer health care for everyone?
See my comment to Ernie above. She taking about the important role Planned Parenthood plays in the health care of women.
Choice on single payer is pretty clear to me. From the Progressive Mass questionnaire:
[Question C3] Do you support moving Massachusetts to Single Payer insurance?
SUPPORT: Tolman
Healey: I support every individual and family having access to quality, affordable health care without regard to what their employer provides.
What role might a Public Option play, in your view?
Healey: see response above
TOLMAN: As Attorney General, I will stand up against private industry establishing monopolies in any sector. I believe a public option could take meaningful steps to providing more competition and more fairness for consumers in an industry with escalating costs.
There has been a lot of talk about evasiveness here over the past few weeks. That takes the cake.
It seems to me both candidates were kind of evasive on that one. Healey’s “access to quality, affordable health care without regard to what their employer provides” could be a public option, or it could be something else. Tolman’s statement suggests a public option could help avoid monopolization, but doesn’t come out for it.
One thing I’ll say for Don Berwick: it’s refreshing when a candidate is willing to say, simply, “Yes, I support that,” instead of these semantic contortions.
I was reading for some kind of statement by Tolman and thought there was none. Now I see is says “Support: Tolman” for single payer. Good for him. Still nice when candidates are forthright.
The question was “Do you support moving Massachusetts to Single Payer insurance?” and Tolman said Yes.
On the second question, the role a public option might play, he explains the value of a public option.
I caught my earlier mistake. Public option answer’s a little odd but indicates at least theoretical support.
Saw that. Would’ve deleted my comment if it was an option. Cheers.
I don’t see the word “single” on this page.
That’s the answer to a different question.
On the question of do you support moving Massachusetts to single payer, Warren Tolman said yes.
“Do you see an opportunity to pander on an issue, because that’s the answer we want to hear, even though the Attorney General position you are seeking will have zero impact on whether we adopt single payer?”
Tolman: “Yes.”
Since it’s the same thing I said about casinos, yet a dozen people here lined up for Maura Healey the minute she changed her position on them.
So she did good outreach.
how this works. Pandering (read: expressing the same position you’ve expressed for 20 years) is bad but exploiting activists’ ignorance is good?
Healey was an unknown candidate, and picked an issue to emerge on. An effective issue where the office she seeks can have an effect.
Tolman has had a lot of opportunity to advocate for single payer. But I don’t recall hearing his name much on it. I guess all that leadership on Clean Elections took up his time.
nt
I view Healey’s newfound outright opposition to casinos as the definition of pandering: swooping in with a sudden evolution on a prominent issue when the existence of casinos, as opposed to the regulation of them, is something a candidate for AG has zero control over. It would be settled by the time she’d take office: Casinos either will be abolished by ballot question in November or they’ll come into being. Then the issue for the AG is enforcing the laws concerning them and protecting the public as best possible. I’ve seen nothing to suggest either candidate’s going to be more effective than the other in doing that.
You can say whatever you like about Tolman and single payer. I could say Elizabeth Warren or Ed Markey haven’t been heard much on it. Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t support it. The fact remains that he was asked a simple question – do you support it? – and he said yes. Maura Healey said word soup. That alone puts him ahead on the issue.
I’ve got some bad news on single payer. Most officials oppose it. Their actions speak louder than whatever they say.
(That’s not a shot at Tolman, who probably sincerely supports it.) But no one in power has acted on single payer.
And now she is taking credit for enforcing a law that Tolman passed, but somehow avoiding the blame for enforcing a pro-casino policy while she worked as an AAG? I just don’t get it fenway. The reality based community is really myopic when it chooses to be about certain candidates.
in October and specifically discussed casinos as an enforcement issue, all the while the casino ballot question was in full force and started months prior. Then she emerged again? In the same primary election?
Ha … that’s funny! I hope she doesn’t take your lead in debates.
Both candidates seem strong, but there are questions which hopefully we’ll get thoughtful responses.
BTW, ain’t it
maybe you should get out more, and spend less time making things up. I think your arguments would be better, if you stay away from DFW territory.
I should get out more.
I don’t make things up.
Any particular reason you’re making this personal about me? Out of ammo for your candidate, perhaps?
didn’t mean to make it sound personal. My sense is that it’s incorrect framing. Both are strong advocates and strong candidates, it seems to me that your comments are unnecessary attacks. There are questions, is Tolman the same person he was 10 years ago is one I have. Healey is way back from the Middlesex DA, Reilly/Coakley. I find it hard to separate and say everything good came from Healey. So i want to get some more information on both.
n/t
Do I have a high regard for Tolman, yes. Doesn’t mean that I’m voting for him.
Healey had a lot of time in the Attorney General’s office and I’ve heard her say nothing about this subject until she was safely a candidate for higher office. If she really didn’t want casinos she could’ve resigned or made a statement that she wouldn’t support her boss’ brief. She didn’t. That’s why it’s a pander.
Tolman has been a consistent advocate on behalf of labor, civil liberties, clean elections, single payer, gun control, restorative justice, and women’s rights (he wrote the law that Healey is bragging about enforcing here). I see absolutely nothing addressing any of those issues from the Healey campaign. All she has got going for her is her ceiling breaking potential and a functionally useless stance on casinos. And I am really sick of how nasty this race is getting-for what it’s worth fenway and I have been effusive in our praise of Healey’s work on LGBT issues and have vowed to vote for her if nominated. She and her supporters are making Tolman into a bad guy, and making this into a lesser of two evils elections-possibly because she isn’t as experienced as he is.
Yes-leadership that actually got a ballot question passed and that came at great personal cost to him since he was willing to risk losing an election to fight for those principles.
Was Healey willing to risk losing her job by opposing her boss back when it would’ve made a difference on casinos?
That’s quite a logic knot, JC.
Elected officials don’t want their staff doing advocacy. Candidates can advocate.
It’s a bit unfair to criticize Healey for not taking a stand on public policy issues when she was an AAG. She wasn’t elected and her role was to represent the Commonwealth, not advocate for particular policies. Having said that, I’m with Tolman.
Candidate Healey also made no stance on casinos, and one can argue she has actually flip flopped since her stance was Tolman’s when she started out. What was her change of heart driven by? Possibly by the need to seize momentum and advantage in the polls? To get on the right side of an easy litmus test?
I also like how her being AAG somehow enabled her to get credit for enforcing Tolman’s law that he actually sponsored and got passed, get credit for helping Coakley fight DOMA, but when it comes to the casino advocacy the AGs office chose to do she gets a pass. Talk about an inconvenient truth.
I don’t think highlighting Tolman’s work history is “nasty” – – it is a necessary component of judging a person’s qualification for office. We know what Healey has been doing for the past 10 years, but we have very little idea as to what Tolman has been doing. Tolman’s investment in online gambling is indisputably relevant to this campaign. It is not information that he offered up on his own, and he only divested after it became a matter of public controversy. We should know more about his other investments, etc. so we can judge whether we want him to hold the position as the Commonwealth’s top attorney. We would of course demand such disclosures of the Republican nominee, and we can be sure that the Republican nominee we be asking these same questions. We’d be crazy not to ask these questions now.
Didn’t mean to downrate.
I am, however, wondering why people do seem to be so quick to downrate on this thread.
As a private citizen she was never asked. In the AG’s office it was not in her portfolio. Once she left the office she was free to separate herself from her former boss’ decision. That’s not pandering. She is the most honest and direct person with no shady dealings. She doesn’t have a brother who stayed in the legislature after being elected the head of the AFL-CIO just to vote FOR casinos before resigning. http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/10/08/mass-state-senator-to-step-down-after-casino-vote/
Not really fair to bring in Steve.
Sorry, but I find it hard to separate having a brother who is head of the AFL-CIO from the issues that go before the AG’s office. Is the AFL-CIO going to recuse itself from endorsing in this race?
We like labor.
I’m a proud progressive, but I’m not too proud to recognize that for every one of us knocking doors for progressive candidates, there are 10 people knocking doors from labor. Labor is the backbone of the Democratic party.
Or made a public statement distancing herself from her boss. Tolman was willing to risk losing an election by following a law he proposed that had not been enacted yet. That takes guts. I see Healey languishing in the polls and taking a symbolic stance when it was politically safe to do so. It was a brilliant political move and I applaud her for holding the same position I do on the ballot question. But it does not somehow inflate her record, mask the fact that she has not addressed the big issues this office actually should tackle, or somehow negate Tolman’s votes and fights over the years. This didn’t have to get ugly-you guys choose to go dirty.
I stand in awe. I hereby urge Maura Healey to withdraw from the race and endorse Warren Tolman.
Since the 1990s. He supported it in his 2002 campaign for Governor. That’s a really long pander.
n/t
These Tolman folks don’t have facts on their side, so they attack other bloggers. I think the attackers are on Tolman’s payroll. These attacks are a badge of honor, and just make the slingers look pathetic.
I actually blog about other subjects, I wish I was getting paid by a campaign and I’d love to move back to the Commonwealth and work in government or public policy. I’ve been trying for over a year now to make that a reality.
But sadly it’s not, you on the other hand only seem to be attacking one candidate and praising another, perhaps you were looking in the mirror when you wanted to malign me and fenway?
That’s what Healey did on casinos! Bravo!
I see what you’re saying now. You’re pointing to his website, my mistake.
Healthcare
Please tell me what Warren Tolman intends to do as AG to make single payer happen. He will be in charge of hospitals. He’s so keen to take on the NRA, but I have heard nothing of taking on the hospitals and insurance companies which the AG really does have oversight of.
What’s his plan to make this single payer thing work from the AG’s job?
What’s Healey’s plan to stop casinos if the voters, legislature, and governor already back it?
What’s Tolman’s plan to make single payer happen from the AG”S office? Still waiting for an answer.
BTW, Maura has said repeatedly she will be a fierce fighter against casinos and regulate them like a hawk to keep organized crime, predatory lending and personal bankruptcy from escalating.
Tolman has said the exact same thing-so no difference. He also detailed above he would take on the health insurance companies as predatory monopolies and work with the legislature to regulate them to allow the space for public option or single payer to emerge. He also said yes when Healey said a complex and utterly meaningless phrase.
Really? When did MA adopt a British-style NHS that puts any government official “in charge” of hospitals?
More about this already-solved problem, yet nothing about privacy.
Access to reproductive health to women is NOT already solved. Some battles have been won for sure, but the war to provide reproductive health care to women goes on and on and on in the details of private and public systems employer based coverage.
And how has Warren not also adopted this fight as his own and fought for these issues? Does anyone honestly think he is pro-life or will somehow fight against women’s rights?
From his website
So let’s move on to where the candidates disagree. Casinos is fair game, as much as I believe Healey pandered, Tolman made the wrong call and I say that as a supporter of his. How about clean elections? How about gun control? How about the civil liberty and policing questions Tom wants answered that neither candidate has really talked about?
Can we all agree both are good on women? Next we will be hearing Healey is the “only candidate” to fight for LGBT…
I meant “solved” in the sense that the buffer zone legislation is already in place (and was sponsored by the other AG candidate).
There most surely is a war against women being conducted. That war is, however, being waged by the GOP. I don’t see health care for women (or reproductive health care for women) as being a significant area of difference between the two candidates for this office.
I’m quite sure that each candidate will fight strongly to protect women’s health against the GOP onslaught. I have no such clarity about the position of either candidate on, for example, electronic surveillance — including (but of course not limited to) metadata collection.
After Brookline: This tragic incident, along with the history of blockades and ineffective injunctions, motivated State Representative Paul Demakis and State Senator Susan Fargo to work with local law enforcement, Planned Parenthood, and other reproductive health care providers to draft the first statewide buffer zone legislation. The bill was introduced in the Massachusetts legislature in January of 1999. The final bill, with several concessions from its original form, was signed by Governor Paul Cellucci in August, 2000 following a compromise with former House Speaker Thomas Finneran.
Jeesh, this exchange is getting really silly. It is simply silly for us to be arguing about which candidate will more vigorously protect and advance women’s reproductive health issues. BOTH will. Vigorously.
I lived in Brookline. My family has used the clinic where the murders took place. I’m all too familiar with the tragedy there. I also spent ten years confronting the anti-abortion extremists who harassed women and degraded the Coolidge Corner area for years. Of far more recent concern is the similarly offensive demonstrations against the new clinic opened on Harvard Street.
Those who know me know that I have advocated strongly in favor of women’s reproductive rights. I am particularly outspoken against those “pro life” extremists who in my view are and should be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. Mr. Tolman did co-sponsor the buffer-zone legislation (along with many others, I assume). I reject your insinuation that his co-sponsorship is not relevant to this exchange.
I already said that each candidate will be a strong advocate for women’s health issues. I see little or no daylight between them on this issue. Whatever their differences are, they are dwarfed by the relentless war on women being waged by the GOP, locally and nationally.
I’m not advocating for Mr. Tolman or for Ms. Healey. I am instead asking each about their position on government surveillance.
While everyone else wants to tell a woman, or have that woman tell others about her health issues, this is the most significant difference regarding privacy that affects every single woman.
I don’t understand.
Are you saying Tolman-who sponsored the law Healey is bragging about enforcing actually wants to tell women what to do? Read his website, then come back to me when you got something real to disagree with him about.
This tragic incident, along with the history of blockades and ineffective injunctions, motivated State Representative Paul Demakis and State Senator Susan Fargo to work with local law enforcement, Planned Parenthood, and other reproductive health care providers to draft the first statewide buffer zone legislation. The bill was introduced in the Massachusetts legislature in January of 1999. The final bill, with several concessions from its original form, was signed by Governor Paul Cellucci in August, 2000 following a compromise with former House Speaker Thomas Finneran. From Planned Parenthood filing to the US Supreme Court
they appear to have strong positions on the enforcement and protection of the buffer zone. Both have a history to back up their statements. Not sure if you think Tolman is lying and in 2000 co-sponsored legislation just to set up a 2014 AG run. But realistically, I think no matter what we’re getting a strong advocate in the AG’s office.
She posted on women’s health this time. There’s still several months until most people have to make a decision on this race.
Maura stressed that a woman’s access to health care is more than a women’s issue – – it’s also a pocketbook issue. She’s right, on a micro and macro level. Because of the Affordable Care Act, women in the U.S. saved many millions on birth control pills last year: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/07/3435156/women-save-money-birth-control/. Maura raised this issue recently when I saw her speak and clearly intends to make this a key piece of her work in the AG’s office.
Jconway– you suggest that Healey could have just resigned her position if she disagreed with the boss’s over casinos. Besides overlooking the privilege implicit in that “recommendation” (the ability to just leave one’s job freely and to continue being able to support oneself and others without another job to call back on) the fact is, in some sense, she DID do that. This casino ballot issue is fresh. She resigned in the Fall to run. She then made her position clear on casinos a month or two ago. It is the opposite position of the AG’s with respect to the ballot question. But now she is now “pandering”? There is a difference between a commenter acknowledging the political gain and intelligence of a candidate’s position and accusations that the position is just pandering. A decision can be the former and still be the candidate’s authentic position. For pandering, you need more. Otherwise it’s just a completely unsupported accusation.
Re Healey’s original post, the mention of taking on the deceptive practices of clinics is important and squarely within the AG’s authority. See this recent piece from the New Yorker on this real and current problem: http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/03/140203fa_fact_press
This is exactly the kind of perception and drilling down that you see coming from Healey.