NEW PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Let me introduce myself as the President of Citizens for Choice, elected in February of this year. I am Elaine Sierra, yes, the same President who led us back in 2006, when we opened our clinic and forged our partnership with Women’s Health Specialists. The late John Holland, as Vice-President, Shauna Heckert as then Executive Director of Women’s Health Specialists, and Christina Comfort, the WHS office administrator for the clinic, deserve a great deal of credit for all the planning and work that went into the successful opening and first year, along with board members and volunteers, including Paula Elliott, Susan Fivelstad, Jan Nelson, Sarah Molaro, Lynn Wenzel, and the late Sadie Wight (memorialized in this newsletter), and communications consultant Susan Rogers.
The clinic opened 16 years ago, on May 24, 2006, at 120 Richardson Street in Grass Valley, in a suite without a bathroom. WHS healthcare providers commuted from Chico one day a week. Volunteers escorted clients to a neighboring office to borrow the use of its bathroom to take urine samples. Today, the clinic operates with its own staff (and yes, its own bathroom). Since mid-2021, it’s been at 984 Plaza Drive, and starting this year, offers reproductive healthcare services a full five days a week.
I could not be prouder of how far we and our WHS colleagues have come. I could not be more grateful to you, our supporters and sustainers, for enabling us to accomplish all we have done. I want to acknowledge and thank each and every one of you for believing in us and acting on your beliefs. And to thank all the board members and volunteers who have contributed to our success over the years.
I also want to let you all know how proud I am of the five other members of our current volunteer board. Each of us is committed to what Citizens for Choice stands for: reproductive justice, health and rights. I have every confidence that, working together – Shannon Cotter, Marty Dekay-Bemis, Margie Determan, Erin McGee, Lynn Wenzel and I – we will accomplish even more this year. Building on our past successes, we plan to extend the clinic’s benefits to many more people and to earn for Citizens for Choice more community recognition of the benefits and value we represent. And, we plan to persist in what is likely to be a post-Roe era.
Please join with us in celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Clinic’s opening. Stay with us as we work toward a brighter future, one of universal, affordable access to reproductive healthcare in Nevada County and beyond. Together, let us advance the dream of a world where every individual can make her own choices – whether, when and with whom to form a family – and where all choices enjoy equal dignity and respect.
Elaine Sierra
President
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