In New York City – a majority-liberal metropolis that voted just last fall to protect abortion rights throughout the state – one of its only Planned Parenthood locations has closed.
On Nov. 1, the organization’s lone Manhattan clinic shut down, an “emotional decision” forced by funding woes, officials said in a release. “The gap between inflation and stagnant reimbursement rates has forced us to make difficult but necessary decisions,” Wendy Stark, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, said. She added that “funds from the sale will allow us to sustain services for systemically underserved communities – the people who need us most.”
The waning reimbursement rates Stark mentioned are a result, in part, of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which brought about cuts to Medicaid funding that will ultimately amount to $1 trillion over the next decade – a problem that has already caused other women’s healthcare clinics to close in other parts of the nation.
One might expect such problems to exist in those red parts of the country, due to draconian conservative oversight and pre-existing funding dearths. But if Planned Parenthood can be forced to shutter a primary location in a largely liberal and relatively rich city, then it’s a problem that can manifest anywhere in the U.S.
It’s not the only evidence of a broader conservative agenda – and its negative results – seeping its way into NYC life, either. Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have conducted increasingly aggressive raids throughout the city’s five boroughs, most recently along a commercial stretch of Manhattan’s Canal Street rife with immigrant street vendors. And as SNAP benefits dry up nationwide amid the ongoing government shutdown, 1.8 million city residents join millions of others throughout the U.S. in a growing food-insecurity crisis.
Yet despite such tangible ramifications of our votes, voter turnout still lags, particularly among both progressives and marginalized groups. It’s a gulf in participation that widened between 2020 and 2024 – a significant contingent of those who voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 declined to turn out in support of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last fall.
The reasons are manifold – from Republican gerrymandering efforts that seek to cut off the already oppressed from exercising their right to vote, to upticks in apathy, disillusionment and lack of information. But now – even in New York City – we’re seeing the ripple effects that come when those of us who can freely vote elect, instead, to assist in paving the way for bad actors to assume power and wreak subsequent havoc.
In election years without federal matters to vote upon – off-cycle years like this one – turnout dips further, still. But it would be to our collective detriment to continue this trend this year.
There is a reason why bad actors in power are going after our voting rights in the first place. Just as there is a reason why the president posts AI-generated videos of himself carpet-bombing his protesters in feces, while naming himself “king,” and why Trump is threatening to cut off federal funding to New York City if Democratic Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani wins the ongoing mayoral race.
It’s because elections matter, every single year and at all tiers of government. Voting matters. Protests matter. All acts of mass organization and collective voicing matter.
They demonstrate strength in numbers, and bring people together so that they might connect about future actions of resistance or communal care. And voting in particular matters because, when we don’t do so – or we can’t – the decisions made by those who assume elected offices in the wake of our non-engagement can bring about mass pain that will hurt us, especially those who are already hurting the most.
It matters that we take advantage of every opportunity to push back, to utilize every tool still available in our arsenal to plainly name that which is not okay, to advocate for better ways – and for better people to lead us down those preferable paths. People who are perhaps imperfect, but who will not shut down our loud dissent with derision, or worse. People who might be pushed to act toward our betterment.
Apathy around the political process, or nihilism about its effectiveness, will not save us. In fact, as we are now seeing, it will only hasten suffering. And neither the place you live, nor your identity, will spare you from the consequences.
The only viable choice is action, over and over again.
Of the Planned Parenthood closure in New York City, New York University student Mina Farahmand told Washington Square News, the school’s independent newspaper, what the results of these policies look like in people’s lives – and why political action to mitigate the enactment and impacts of such policies is necessary.
“With Plan B being left unstocked at NYU vending machines, Planned Parenthood leaving Manhattan and NYU refusing to offer abortion services to students on site, we must organize and build campaigns to win NYU and New York as a fortress of reproductive health care,” she said. “We must fight back every step of the way.” ◼️
