[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 7569]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       A MARCH FOR WOMEN'S LIVES

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, at the ``March for Women's Lives'' 
yesterday, I joined the hundreds of thousands of women from across the 
United States and the world to show support for a woman's right to 
choose and for access to reproductive health services.
  This demonstration comes at a time when women's reproductive rights 
are in immediate danger. Not only has President Bush done more to roll 
back women's reproductive health than any president in history, 
opponents of abortion in Congress have made advances in the assault on 
the right to choose.
  In the past decade, Congress has voted on choice related issues 168 
times. Women lost in 136 of those votes.
  As if these attacks themselves were not disturbing enough, the fact 
that they have gone largely unnoticed and unchallenged is even more 
alarming.
  That is why, now, more than ever since Roe v. Wade, it is vital to 
show President Bush and his friends in Congress that we will fight to 
maintain women's reproductive rights and access to health care in 
America.
  Since the day George W. Bush took office, his administration has been 
systematically chipping away at women's reproductive rights.
  One of his first acts as President was to reinstate the global gag 
rule, which prevents U.S. foreign aid from funding any overseas clinic 
that performs or counsels women on abortion.
  The Bush Administration has announced at international conferences 
that the United States believes that life begins at conception.
  They have canceled the United States' contribution to the United 
Nations' family planning program.
  Instead, they have promoted abstinence-only sex education for young 
people both here and abroad, even though their success at preventing 
pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases has been 
questioned.
  George W. Bush has also consistently nominated judicial candidates 
who oppose a woman's right to choose to lifetime appointments on the 
Federal bench.
  Just this month, he signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which, 
for the first time, puts into Federal law the concept that life begins 
at conception. This will, in effect, grant a fetus or even a fertilized 
egg separate rights as a person and can now be used legally to further 
chip away at a woman's constitutional right to choose.
  I offered an alternative to this bill that would have provided the 
same effect and punishment for offenders in criminal law, but did not 
address the profound and deeply divisive question of when life begins.
  The President also approved a ban on so-called partial birth 
abortions, which is the first law outlawing abortion since the Roe v. 
Wade decision. It is also the first time that a medical procedure has 
ever been criminalized.
  This unconstitutional law has not yet been enforced because of 
lawsuits pending against it in Federal courts in San Francisco, New 
York and Lincoln, NE.
  In disregard for people's privacy, U.S. Justice Department attorneys 
defending the law have attempted to compel two doctors to turn over 
private patient abortion records.
  Who knows where it will stop? We are on a slippery slope toward 
granting fetuses greater rights than the mothers who carry them. It may 
not be long before common forms of contraception, in-vitro 
fertilization and stem-cell research are banned in the name of the 
unborn.
  These Federal laws, along with more than 350 anti-choice measures 
enacted by States, are setting legal precedents that abortion opponents 
will use to challenge Roe v. Wade, which is perilously close to being 
overturned.
  The Supreme Court appears to be only one vote away from reversing Roe 
v. Wade and taking the decision to have an abortion away from a woman 
and her doctor and putting it in the hands of politicians.
  It is entirely possible that abortion will once again be illegal in 
this country.
  For many women, it has been easy to take the right to choose for 
granted, because it is all they have ever known.
  I remember a time, however, when an estimated 1.2 million women each 
year resorted to illegal, back alley abortions despite the possibility 
of death and infection.
  I remember that time very vividly. In college during the 1950s, I 
knew young women who found themselves pregnant with no options. I even 
knew a woman who committed suicide because she was pregnant and 
abortion was illegal in the United States.
  I also remember the passing of a collection plate in my college 
dormitory so that another friend could go to Mexico for an abortion.
  That is why it is so important to show President Bush that we will 
NOT just stand back and do nothing while women's rights are taken away.
  Women have a fundamental right to determine when and whether to 
become a mother. The Government should not be able to take that right 
away.
  We cannot go back to a time without choice.

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