Press Release California
Press Release
NARAL Pro-Choice California Endorses Isaac Bryan in Special Election for California’s 54th Assembly District
For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 29, 2021
Contact: [email protected]
California — NARAL Pro-Choice California today announced its endorsement of Isaac Bryan in his bid to represent California’s 54th Assembly District in the upcoming special election. Bryan is seeking to fill the seat vacated by former Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager, who was elected earlier this year to the California state Senate in a special election to serve the 30th Senate District.
“Isaac Bryan is a stalwart defender of reproductive freedom who has organized to expand access to high-quality healthcare for everyone, particularly for people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and women who are incarcerated,” said NARAL Pro-Choice California Director Shannon Olivieri Hovis. “NARAL Pro-Choice California is proud to endorse Bryan on behalf of our more than 295,000 members statewide. As a community organizer, activist, and academic, Bryan is precisely the type of intersectional leader that California needs to advance reproductive freedom and racial justice for all Californians.”
“Healthcare can’t be a privilege for just the few. And the freedom of choice is central to the rights of all people of self-determination and bodily autonomy. Those rights are under attack, and it’s the responsibility of every one of us who believes in them to stand up and defend them. Restrictions on rights – especially healthcare rights – fall first and hardest on our most vulnerable family, friends and neighbors,” said Isaac Bryan. “I’ve been honored to have learned from, worked for, and organized alongside a powerful group of determined women. I’m deeply committed to responsible, impactful allyship. And I’m honored to have the support of NARAL Pro-Choice California, and to fight alongside the hundreds of thousands of women and allies in the struggle for justice and freedom for all.”
Isaac Bryan is the founding director of the UCLA Black Policy Project and a community organizer who has centered his career on justice reform. His work includes co-chairing the Measure J campaign in Los Angeles County, where he fought to allocate resources to expand access to healthcare, including to sex education, contraception, and abortion care. He previously served as an advisor to state Sen. Sydney Kamlager and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
NARAL Pro-Choice California has more than 295,000 members across the state and action councils located in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, the Antelope Valley, and the Bay Area. NARAL’s 2020 electoral program in California protected critical seats flipped in 2018 and helped safeguard the nation’s first-ever U.S. House majority in support of reproductive freedom.
Although California is a leader in reproductive freedom and healthcare innovation, 40% of its counties do not have an abortion provider, and nine counties do not have a single OB-GYN. These barriers to access disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, people with low incomes, and rural communities.
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For over 50 years, NARAL Pro-Choice America and its network of state affiliates and chapters have fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom—including access to abortion, contraception, and paid family leave—for every body. NARAL is powered by its more than 2.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 7 in 10 Americans who believe every person should have the freedom to make the best decision for themselves about if, when, and how to raise a family.