When Antonio’s wife, Iliana, an Afro-Caribbean woman, was pregnant with their first son, they went for a prenatal appointment at Woodhull Hospital. There, Antonio learned that Black women in New York City were eight times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts. Since then, he has dedicated himself to addressing New York City’s maternal health crisis and championing reproductive justice.

Within Antonio’s first year as Borough President, he made history by allocating the entirety of his fiscal year budget – a total of $45 million – to outfit Brooklyn’s three public hospitals with state-of-the-art women’s health and birthing centers. With the help of his Maternal Health Task Force, he has since built an expansive maternal health agenda that includes everything from creating an annual $50,000 community baby shower fund to establishing Brooklyn College’s first-of-its-kind perinatal mental health program and piloting the Born in Brooklyn baby boxes that Mayor Mamdani has now decided to expand citywide.

In Congress, Antonio will extend his historic maternal health agenda to DC and zero in on reproductive justice as Trump and Republicans continue to chip away at people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies, access abortion, and receive holistic reproductive care. He will support universal access to reproductive and sexual healthcare, fight for the full repeal of the Hyde Amendments, and advocate to codify abortion as a Constitutional right.

In his campaign for Medicare for All, he will demand coverage for abortion and reproductive care, and in the meantime, he will fight to require Medicaid and private insurance to cover abortion and reproductive care as well. He will advocate for expanded access to medication abortion. He will fight for protections for clients experiencing harassment and physical harm while entering an abortion clinic. He will strengthen data privacy laws and shield laws for those receiving and providing abortion care, including via telehealth. And he will expose Crisis Pregnancy Centers seeking to mislead and misguide people seeking medical care.