RMA Gives Fertility a Helping Hand

Starting a family, when you’re having difficulty ge ing or staying pregnant, may feel overwhelming, even scary at times. But you don’t have to feel this way. For more than twenty years, RMA New Jersey’s compassionate fertility specialists and an 83.3% birth success rate have helped put more than 50,000 babies in to the arms of loving parents.

8 10 out of 83.3% individuals who visit RMA New Jersey make their vision of parenthood a reality.

RMA’s Live Birth Rate in women under 35 years*

Demanding Action 07030

from page 6 memory of the experience of understanding what had happened in Colorado. I grew up in a suburban area of Massachusetts, and I remember thinking that it looked like where I went to high school. Then, fast forward to when Sandy Hook happened, and my first daughter was little. She had just been born, and I was so struck. I think that everybody was devastated to see how that transpired and how little the kids were,” Jabbour says it was around that time that she started following Moms Demand Action. She had contacted the organization and considered volunteering, but life got in the way. “I was dealing with raising little kids, and then the Pulse nightclub shooting happened. That was sort of a different facet of it because it specifically targeted a nightclub frequented by the gay, transgender or queer community, so it was a hate crime. At what point are we going to see these things and not let vulnerable populations continue to be targeted.”

“All of those other things lead up to it, but watching that drill and being a part of it made me say, ‘OK, I’ve had quite enough now.’ We’re at the point where we’re asking 3- and 4-year-olds to huddle in classrooms for the sake of kowtowing to a culture that allows guns to run rampant. That’s enough,” Jabbour says. That was the day she followed up on an email that was sitting in her inbox for a while. She agreed to start the Hudson County chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

The first meeting took place in the back room of Hudson Tavern. “We had our assemblywoman come out. The chief of police came. I was like, ‘I don’t really know what to do, I don’t really know what this looks like, but I know we have to prevent this from ever happening here,’ ” Jabbour says. Jabbour was shocked when she saw the data about gun ownership in Hoboken. “There was, on average at that time in around 2015, around 200 permits per year. I guess I had this picture in my mind that we live in an urban environment, but we’re in a Democratic area of the state, and guns really proliferate in a more conservative area, in Pennsylvania, maybe, where people are hunting. It didn’t really hit me that this would be the case in this community,” Jabbour says. “I started sharing this information with other people. I started going to community meetings. There was Coffee with a Cop every quarter, and I started going, and I would wear my red Moms Demand Action shirt, and I would say, ‘I’m here to talk about this issue and share what I know and figure out how we can put a focus on this in the community.’ People were very supportive of this topic. Other parents felt similarly to how I felt about it when we talked about active shooter drills.”

Then, Gov. Phil Murphy took office. Jabbour says, “He put a very high level of priority on this topic. All of a sudden, there are all of these bills moving through the New Jersey State Legislature. So we were calling our legislators and advocating for these bills. Over time New Jersey’s gun laws have become stronger and stronger in this landscape because Gov. Murphy has made that a priority, but it also speaks to all of the volunteer support.”

Jabbour, along with Moms Demand Action and her co-leader, Amy Faucher also created change locally.

“I met with the police department, and now everyone issued a gun permit in Hoboken will receive materials from the Be Smart Initiative. Be Smart For Kids is all about safe storage of your weapons and making sure that children aren’t exposed to irresponsible behaviors, all in the name of preventing these completely preventable deaths that you hear about where a kid brings a gun to school in a backpack or is playing with it thinking it’s a toy when it’s loaded because there wasn’t proper storage,” Jabbour says. “I’m really proud that Hoboken has been supportive of that. They have the information available on their website. They hand out free gun locks that we fundraised for and donated. Those are small things, but they make a big difference over time.”

Anyone interested in getting involved can find information via the Moms Demand Action app or by texting JOIN to 64433.

“When I went from being in the Moms Demand Action universe to then running for office, I, in some ways, was a little bit ahead of something that came later, which is when Moms created something called Demand A Seat. Basically, if our legislators aren’t supportive of our policies, then we should demand a seat at the table. Now, there’s a vigorous training program for moms who are Moms Demand Action volunteers who want to take that next step and get involved politically,” Jabbour says.

Jabbour was driven to run for office before the Demand A Seat program was there to encourage her because she says she’s always been civic-minded.

“My dad, who is now 86, was there when I was sworn in as council president. He was like, ‘I remember when you were in fifth grade, and you ran as class representative for your student council. This is just another chapter in how you have always been wired, Emily,’ ” Jabbour says with a laugh. It sounds like she’s been using her voice for a long time. — 07030