Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday it was time to end the “taboo” and speak candidly about the “vagina” and women’s health.
“We can talk about erectile dysfunction but not about clitoral stimulation: something is wrong. Something is wrong,” Adams said in her surprise vagina monologue at City Hall.
Hizzoner enlivened conservation as her health care team announced that the first-ever availability of abortion pills at city-run health clinics could provide up to 10,000 medical abortions a year — under a new contract with a reported drugmaker for the first time by The Post on Sunday .
“The woman’s body is taboo. Nobody wants to talk about it,” Adams said.
“I’ll never forget when I was talking about a menopause-friendly environment in Brooklyn Borough Hall, and all the women came up to me and said, ‘Please don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it,'” she said of her time as president of the Brooklyn district.
He continued, “And if we start a conversation, the beauty of the woman’s physical anatomy. We will lean on this.
Adams’ deputy mayor for health and human services, Anne Williams-Isom, said she was thrilled with her boss’s vagina advocacy.
“The mayor came up to me and said, ‘I think we should talk more about vaginas.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ He never ceases to amaze me,” Williams-Isom said.
The mayor’s remarks attracted light-hearted humor from another man, city health commissioner Ashwin Vasan.
“I know I am missing a chromosome. That’s why I was at the top of the stairs,” she joked during the press conference inside the Town Hall rotunda.
The mayor was surrounded by the city’s top women’s public health officials, including Zahirah McNatt and Leslie Hayes of the Department of Health and Machelle Allen and Wendy Wilcox of Health+ Hospitals of New York, who all spoke.
The four health clinics offering the abortion pills — mifepristone and misoprostol — will be located in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, Jamaica in downtown Harlem and Crown Heights.
Vasan said New York City will become the first municipality in the country to offer free abortion pills at his agency’s health clinics.
Medical and surgical abortions are currently provided in public hospitals in the city.
“These four sites can provide up to 10,000 medical abortions a year, and this is in addition to what our public hospital system already does,” Vasan said.
Vasan said that any woman across the country can access the abortion pills at city clinics.
He did not provide a price tag when asked how much the pills would cost city taxpayers.
The mayor and city council approved a package of laws last year to make it easier for women to access abortion services — including abortion pills — after the US Supreme Court overturned the decision. Roe v. Wade legalizing the federal right to abortion, leaving the decision to the states. Many other states are restricting abortions.
Both pro- and anti-abortion activists agree that New York could be a tourism mecca for women seeking abortions by making abortion pills widely available.
“Abortion, sadly, is New York’s answer to all things pregnancy. Abortion is promoted as a social good. Why doesn’t New York help pregnant women who want to keep their babies carry them to full term and escape poverty? Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said Sunday.
The chairman of the state Conservative Party, Gerald Kassar, was enraged: “This is abortion tourism. New York has gone too far on abortion.”