[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 58 (Friday, April 1, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E340]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





               WOMEN OF THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. BARBARA LEE

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 29, 2022

  Ms. LEE of California. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to 
the countless people--organizers and activists, jurists and justices, 
doctors and clinic staff--whose work and leadership continues to secure 
access to abortion services across the country. For generations, women 
have been at the forefront of the fight to secure reproductive health 
services, and their bravery and vision continues to inspire our work 
today. In the face of the most serious effort to turn back the clock on 
abortion access in decades, their work is more important today than 
ever.
  Around the country, medical providers and clinic staff show up to 
work every day to ensure that people have the care they need. They 
routinely provide care in the face of unrelenting threats, violence, 
and harassment by anti-abortion extremists, showing up each day to 
ensure that people in our communities have access to care. These 
providers and clinic staff have been innovating and adapting to meet an 
unending series of challenges and hurdles. Each day, abortion care 
providers are working toward a world in which every person can shape 
their own futures and families.
  I want to share some of their names here today--just some of the many 
women whose work is critical to making abortion accessible.
  Dr. Kathryn Fay, MD/MSCI, is on the faculty in the Division of 
Complex Family Planning at Brigham and Women's hospital, an instructor 
at Harvard Medical School, and is an NIH-funded researcher focusing on 
reproductive coercion. She continues to provide a full spectrum of 
care, including labor and delivery services, medication and procedural 
abortions, contraceptive counseling, and routine gynecologic care.
  Dr. Halley Crissman is an OB/GYN in Southeast Michigan who provides 
gender-affirming care, abortion care, and comprehensive sexual and 
reproductive care. Dr. Crissman advocates tirelessly for her patients--
for their access to safe, high quality medical care, and for their 
respect and bodily autonomy. She is the Director of Gender Affirming 
Care with Planned Parenthood of Michigan which is working to expand 
access to gender-affirming hormone care across the state of Michigan, 
while simultaneously working to protect and expand access to abortion 
care.
  Dr. Katherine Farris has worked at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic 
for more than 13 years. She is a family physician who has provided 
abortion care throughout her career because she recognizes that without 
the ability to decide if or when to become a parent, no person has true 
freedom or autonomy to create the life they desire.
  Dr Rathika Nimalendran works as an abortion provider at a health 
clinic in North Carolina. In a profile for Physicians for Reproductive 
Health, she wrote ``I have always been compelled to provide abortion 
care. I believe in a woman's right to choose what is best for her, and 
I provide abortions to help women who have made the choice to safely 
terminate a pregnancy.''
  Joan Whitaker retired as the director of health services at ABCD 
(Action for Boston Community Development) in June 2020 after serving 
the Boston community for 33 years.
  Dr. Adeola Oni-Orisan is a medical anthropologist and board-certified 
family physician specializing in reproductive healthcare. She provides 
abortion care in California and also travels to Georgia to provide 
abortions as interim-medical director of abortion services at Planned 
Parenthood Southeast. As a medical anthropologist, her work seeks to 
illuminate experiences of seeking and providing reproductive health 
care in Black birthwork communities in the bay area. She is also a 
leader in One Love Black Community, an organization which supports 
Black birthing people in San Francisco who are pregnant, postpartum, or 
postabortion.
  Madam Speaker, abortion is essential, abortion providers are 
essential, and independent abortion clinics do essential work. Many 
also provide other life-saving services, including hormone therapy and 
gender-affirming care, prenatal and birthing care, STI and HIV testing 
and treatment, birth control and family planning, and sometimes even 
primary care. We celebrate each of these women today, together with 
doctors and nurses, clinic staff and administrators, across the 
country.
  In addition to medical professionals and clinic staff, we also honor 
the women whose work as advocates, activists, and organizers is 
critical to ensuring that each person has access to the care they need. 
Women who have fought for the passage of laws that protect, rather than 
restrict, abortion access, have advocated for funding for reproductive 
health priorities; women who go into communities to coordinate and 
educate, and to connect people with the care and services they seek. 
Women who ensure we all know what our rights are, and who teach us to 
raise our voices to demand the protection of those rights.
  I particularly want to pay tribute to the women who have been working 
on the ground in Texas, especially in the months since the enactment of 
S.B. 8. In the light of unprecedented restrictions and draconian new 
laws, organizers and activists in Texas have persisted, and their work 
is more critical now than ever.
  I want to highlight one organizer today: Lucy Ceballos Felix. Lucy, 
originally from Matamoros, Tamaulipas; Mexico, is certified by the 
state of Texas as a Community Health Worker (CHW) and Community Health 
Worker Instructor (CHWI). Since 2012, Lucy has worked at the National 
Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice as Associate Director of 
Field and Advocacy in Texas, meeting with groups of women and other 
from various cities in the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley, 
Corpus Christ, and Houston. Her work helps community groups learn how 
to discover and develop their leadership, mobilize their community, and 
take action on political issues that are harming their lives, families, 
and communities. In the light of recent Texas legislation, Lucy's work 
is needed now more than ever.
  I could speak for hours about the women who paved the legal path that 
is now under threat from the Supreme Court and the women who, as 
legislators at both the state and national level, have fought for 
passage of bills that expand abortion access and refused to accept 
policies that put it farther out of reach. I want to close by paying 
tribute to just one--Rep. Shirley Chisholm.
  Rep. Chisholm was a trailblazer in so many ways, and not the least of 
these was her support for reproductive rights and abortion access. In 
1969 she was named honorary president of NARAL, in 1970 she supported 
legalization of abortion in her home state of New York, and in 1970 
described abortion as an issue of economic and racial justice. In 1989, 
she was one of 16 Black women who published the first collective 
statement calling for equal access to abortion. Rep. Chisholm 
emphasized what continues to be true today: that although abortion 
restrictions and bans hurt everyone, their impacts fall most heavily on 
women of color, low-income women, and others who already face barriers 
to accessing health care. Rep. Chisholm understood that reproductive 
justice is critical to economic and racial justice, and I am proud to 
continue her work as co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus.
  Madam Speaker, every day across the United States and around the 
world, women are protecting, upholding, and expanding abortion access. 
Generations of women--lawyers, organizers, providers, activists, 
volunteers--are responsible the rights and freedoms we currently enjoy, 
and the Pro-Choice Caucus is committed to building upon their legacy. 
Even in the face of unprecedented threats, we will continue to fight 
for a future where everyone, no matter where they live or how much 
money they make, has the freedom to make decisions, for themselves, 
about their bodies, their lives, and their futures.

                          ____________________