Issue Position: Protecting Women & Women's Rights

Issue Position

I am fully supportive of a woman's right to choose and will fight against any government intrusion into the efforts of a woman to control her own body and life. Indeed, my first speech as a member of the legislature was against a bill that would deny women the ability to purchase insurance on our health exchanges that would cover abortion. However, to me, Women's Rights is about more than laws about abortion. Women face special health, economic and legal challenges that men do not; I support efforts to remedy these problems. I am a proud member of the Women's Health Caucus and have cosponsored a variety of pro-woman and pro-family legislation, including pay equity, increase eligibility for breast and cervical cancer screenings, enhanced protections for domestic violence victims and more. I've also attended numerous Planned Parenthood rallies and spoken repeatedly in favor of the services that they provide. I will fight, tooth and nail, against any effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

Furthermore, as has become painfully clear, women are too often the victims of sexual harassment, and the government must do more to protect them from predators who seek to abuse their positions of power for their own twisted gains. That's why I signed on to cosponsor legislation that would:

Prohibit any member of the PA General Assembly from paying settlement costs with taxpayer funds;

Require that paid leave or remote work assignments be offered to victims during proceedings;

Guarantee that a lawyer or victim's counsel be offered to represent victims during proceedings; and

Put in place reform procedures for investigation & resolution of complaints, improves training & transparency of sexual harassment prevention & response training in employment.
In the past, I've also introduced legislation that would expand sexual harassment protections to small businesses with less than five employees; that legislation has been introduced again this year, and I am again cosponsoring it.

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