[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 82 (Friday, May 13, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E498-E499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 12, 2022

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Jayapal and 
Congresswoman Maloney, for leading today's special order on the threat 
to reproductive rights and the devastating impact that the loss of our 
rights would have on communities and families.
  Reproductive rights have constantly been at risk since Roe vs. Wade 
became the law of the land almost 50 years ago. But never have they 
been in jeopardy as much as they are today.
  The recent disclosure of the U.S. Supreme Court's draft opinion in 
the Dobbs case shows just how precarious reproductive rights are in the 
United States.
  By imposing their personal views and impetuous whim, the five 
justices who support that opinion could eliminate essential rights that 
are Constitutionally protected, relied upon by American society, and 
supported overwhelmingly by the American people.
  Yet, these five Supreme Court Justices--who embody antiquated, 
regressive views--could turn the clock back to days when women did not 
have the right to control their bodies or their reproductive health.
  In fact, by basing the draft opinion on a strict textualist 
interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, the five renegades would be 
issuing an opinion that reverses a whole roster of Constitutionally 
protected rights, even beyond reversing Roe vs. Wade.
  If the draft opinion is issued, these five jurists would be doing 
exactly what they testified under oath at their confirmation hearings 
that they would not do. It seems clear to me that they were not 
forthcoming--even worse, they were not truthful--when they testified to 
the U.S. Senate under penalty of perjury.
  The myopic rationale on which the draft opinion is based reveals a 
lack of fidelity to the principle of stare decisis, despite the claims 
to the contrary that each of the five made when asked about the Roe 
case at their confirmation hearings.
  Equally tragically, if the draft opinion in the Dobbs case becomes 
law without major changes, it will open the floodgates for states to 
curtail women's reproductive rights in myriad nefarious ways. Many 
states have already enacted laws which severely restrict access to 
abortions and other reproductive rights, and many more have accelerated 
the process to follow that path.
  These are tragically just the latest in a long history of 
conservative efforts to marginalize women by eliminating our 
reproductive rights. These draconian efforts have an impact that 
disrupts every aspect of women's lives, extending to their educational 
plans, economic status, career paths, family choices, and role in 
society.
  Restrictions on reproductive rights have a disproportionate effect on 
low-income individuals and women of color.
  Low-income individuals and people of color face a range of worse 
health outcomes than higher income individuals and white people.
  These worse outcomes are the result of higher barriers to quality 
health care, higher rates of stress, poorer living and working 
conditions, and, for people of color, racial discrimination.
  People of color and low-income individuals, experience the highest 
rates of unintended pregnancy, partially because of barriers to 
accessing quality family planning services and contraception, lack of 
insurance coverage, and, for racial minorities, discrimination in 
health care.
  Because of this, low-income people and people of color have higher 
rates of abortion, as abortion rates mirror rates of unintended 
pregnancy.
  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 
2018 the reported legal abortions in Texas broken down by race were:
  White: 27 percent
  African American: 27 percent
  Hispanic: 39 percent
  Other: 7 percent
  Because people of color are disproportionately low income, they are 
also disproportionately impacted by abortion restrictions: policies 
such as early abortion bans, and mandatory waiting periods 
disproportionately hurt people of color, who are less likely to be able 
to miss work to travel to far-away clinics. Abortion restrictions put 
the health of people of color at risk.
  According to the CDC, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native 
pregnant people are nearly two to three times as likely to die from 
pregnancy-related complications than white people.
  A new study by Dr. David Eisenberg, a board-certified obstetrician-
gynecologist, estimates that Texas SB 8's new restrictions on women's 
health could cause increases in maternal mortality of up to 15 percent 
overall, and up to 33 percent for Black women next year.
  Texas Senate Bill 8, or the ``Texas Heartbeat Act'' which has 
recently been passed in my home state restricts access to abortion and 
is one of the harshest laws regarding abortion access in the Nation.
  According to the Guttmacher Institute, before the ban, the average 
woman of childbearing age in Texas lived 17 miles from the nearest 
abortion provider, now, the average driving distance is 247 miles.
  This ban is a clear violation of the right to abortion established by 
the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
  The Roe Court rooted its decision in the right to personal privacy, 
connecting it to other fundamental rights of self-determination such as 
the freedom to marry, the freedom to procreate or use contraception, 
and the right to make one's own decisions about child rearing and 
education.
  The Roe Court also rejected the argument that an embryo or fetus 
constitutes a ``person'' for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment to 
the Constitution.
  Nearly two decades later, in 1992, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the 
basic right to terminate a pregnancy but weakened Constitutional 
safeguards surrounding abortion in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern 
Pennsylvania v. Casey.
  However, the Casey Court concluded that states could enact certain 
types of pre-viability regulations to protect fetal life, holding that 
abortion, ``the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause,'' is only 
protected ``where state regulation imposes an undue burden on a woman's 
ability to make this decision.''
  In the decades following Casey, many states sought to reduce or 
eliminate abortions: Texas, for example, passed a law requiring 
abortion clinics to meet ambulatory surgical center standards even 
though other providers of procedures such as colonoscopies and 
liposuction--which have far higher mortality rates--were subject to 
none of the same regulations .
  In 2016, the Supreme Court in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt 
held by a margin of 5-4 that this Texas law was unconstitutional, and 
also struck down a provision of the same law that required physicians 
performing abortions in Texas to have active admitting privileges at a 
hospital within 30 miles of their facilities.
  Today, we see the state of Texas once again attempting to curtail 
women's constitutional right to terminate pregnancy through SB 8.
  SB 8 bans abortions at around six weeks into the gestation period, 
when fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which falls before many 
people even know that they are pregnant.
  The bill doesn't stop there, as the enforcement of the law by private 
citizens is incentivized.
  This law places a bounty on people seeking healthcare--a minimum of 
$10,000 plus costs and attorneys' fees--to the individual who 
successfully brings a suit under the law's private right of action.
  Not since the Fugitive Slave Act has a law been enacted that turns 
people into bounty hunters to hunt people for profit in the pursuit of 
enforcement of an unjust immoral law.
  This empowers any private citizen--including but not limited to, 
antichoice extremists, ex-partners, assaulters, and strangers--to sue 
any person or organization that helps someone access abortion care 
after about six weeks of pregnancy.
  SB 8 promotes, encourages, and will lead to vigilante justice, which 
many anti-choice organizations and activists actively try to deny. The 
law, and how it is enforced, is purposefully designed to have a 
chilling effect on a deeply private decision.
  The private right of action also provides a tool for harassing 
abortion providers with costly lawsuits, discouraging them from 
providing services, and limiting access to reproductive healthcare.
  As anti-choice activists continue to face questions and criticism, 
they will continue to

[[Page E499]]

distort the reality of the law and deflect attention from its 
enforcement mechanism.
  However, the effect of the enforcement mechanism is already in the 
making, as anti-abortion groups in Texas have already set up anonymous 
tip lines to allow individuals to act on their vigilante desires to 
punish people for making a personal decision.
  This is why, in October 2021, I introduced H.R. 5710, the 
``Preventing Vigilante Stalking that Stops Women's Access to Healthcare 
and Abortion Rights Act of 2021''; my Senate companion bill S.3057 .
  This bicameral bill will enhance criminal penalties under the federal 
stalking statute if the stalking is done with the intent to prevent or 
report on a woman's health decisions. This bill does not include any 
mandatory minimums.
  The ``Preventing Vigilante Stalking that Stops Women's Access to 
Healthcare and Abortion Rights Act of 2021'' will save lives--not only 
for women seeking essential healthcare services; it would also stop the 
threats poised by abusive partners who may feel emboldened by this 
heinous Texas law.
  Thus far, SB 8 has accomplished exactly what it was meant to: the 
law's in terrorem effect has forced women to flee the state in order to 
obtain a safe and legal abortion.
  For example, at 21 years old, Texas college student Madi was a senior 
in college when she discovered that she was pregnant. Madi was in a 
committed relationship and on birth control, and did not experience any 
early pregnancy signs until the nine-week mark, which she initially 
chalked up to the typical stress of being a senior and starting a new 
semester.
  Madi immediately began to research nearby clinics across state lines, 
because SB8 prevented her from obtaining an abortion in Texas.
  Madi called more than 30 clinics in Louisiana, Alabama, Kansas, 
Oklahoma, and Nevada--they were all booked for weeks.
  Eventually, Madi was able to obtain an appointment at Jackson Women's 
Health in Mississippi, more than 400 miles away.
  Another example is Ianthe Davis, who at just over six weeks pregnant 
ended her bartending shift at 4 a.m. one morning in Dallas in order to 
drive three three hours up Interstate 35 to Trust Women clinic in 
Oklahoma City.
  She was treated by Dr. Rebecca Taub, an obstetrician and gynecologist 
who travels once a month from California to perform abortions for 
women.
  After the procedure, Davis drove home; according to Davis on the need 
for the procedure, ``If I don't work, I don't make money.''
  A Texas woman, an Oklahoma clinic, a California doctor: this scene 
offers a snapshot of the landscape under this horrific Texas law that 
bans nearly all abortions after an embryonic heartbeat is detected.
  And there is Dr. Alan Braid, who was sued in Arkansas and Illinois 
for carrying out an abortion on a woman who was in the early stages of 
her pregnancy but beyond the six-week limit set by the law.
  Dr. Braid, who has been practicing medicine for nearly 50 years, 
wrote in a September 18 opinion column in the Washington post that: ``I 
acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all 
patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this 
care.''
  As Dr. Braid demonstrates, this law places doctors in the impossible 
position of either obeying an unjust law or upholding their Hippocratic 
oath.
  In addition to this heinous privatization of vigilante bounty 
hunters, the law has an enforcement mechanism that is uniquely crafted 
to be difficult to challenge in court.
  Unlike other laws that restrict abortion access, SB 8 does not allow 
for any state officials to enforce the statute.
  Rather, the lone enforcement mechanism is a private right of action 
that allows any individual who knowingly engages in or intends to 
engage in ``conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of 
an abortion'' in violation of the six-week ban.
  SB 8's enforcement structure represents a deliberate and disturbing 
effort by the State of Texas to evade judicial scrutiny long enough for 
a clearly unconstitutional law to take effect. Through this enforcement 
mechanism, a deeply troubling precedent is set.
  This precedent could be followed by other states aiming to undermine 
the constitutional right to abortion, but for any state efforts to 
undermine any other of our rights protected by the constitution.
  If this enforcement mechanism found in SB 8 is to stay, the similar 
measures can be utilized by any state in order to slowly chip away at 
constitutional rights.
  This bill also willfully ignores the fact that many women will not 
know they are pregnant at the six-week mark, and this will 
disproportionately effect women who are struggling to make ends meet, 
and women of color.
  Even if a woman did know that she was pregnant within the narrow six-
week period allowed by SB 8, it is not always possible for someone to 
get an abortion as soon as they have made that decision.
  Many things can stand in their way, from not being able to afford it, 
travel distance to a clinic, not being able to get off work, or 
barriers put in place by politicians, such as bans on abortion 
coverage; or they may get new information about their health or their 
pregnancy.
  Ensuring that everyone can get reproductive health care, including 
abortion is part of addressing racial and economic injustice.
  Our Nation is amid a racial reckoning and transformation and we must 
unite against racism and discrimination and this will always include 
ending policies that deny people equitable access to healthcare, 
including abortion.
  Forcing someone to continue a pregnancy against their will is simply 
a violation of their rights and their basic humanity.
  The deeply private decision-making process of accessing abortion care 
is essential to women's bodily autonomy, and SB 8 greatly infringes on 
that of the people in my home state.
  One of the most important and consequential decisions we as people 
ever make is whether we become parents, and these restrictions were 
designed to control, dehumanize, and criminalize women and their 
doctors.
  We need to ensure that all people have access to the reproductive 
health care that they need, including access to abortion.
  Once someone has decided to seek abortion care, I want them to be 
able to have access to safe and affordable medical care. I want them to 
be supported, not restricted by laws that dictate their decision or 
place unnecessary barriers on the process.
  The decision to have an abortion should happen between those seeking 
abortions, and their doctors--there is no place for the Governor of 
Texas, the Texas Legislation, or any other individual to control this 
private decision.
  The Texan government needs to trust people to make decisions for 
their own lives, their own bodies, and their own futures, and I trust 
Texans to always do what is right for themselves and those they love.
  Those seeking abortion should not be punished or shamed for having an 
abortion but supported and treated with compassion.
  SB 8 and other laws like it are the antithesis to what this country 
is supposed to be about, which is having the freedom to make your own 
life.
  I have heard some say that this bill is popular in Texas, and that is 
not the case.
  A poll done by NPR found that a clear majority of Americans, 
specifically 59 percent of Republicans, 61 of Democrats and 53 percent 
of independents, oppose a ban on abortions at the 6-8 week mark.
  Furthermore, the poll found that 74 percent of those polled opposed 
legal action by private citizens--which broken down was 57 percent of 
Republicans, 90 percent of Democrats, and 74 percent of Independents.
  To say this legislation is popular or is at the wishes of the 
constituents is a lie.
  It's egregious to be focused on outlawing something that most 
Americans believe should be a personal decision, as a pandemic ravages 
our communities and basic health care needs go unmet.

                          ____________________