[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                    A STATE OF CRISIS: EXAMINING THE
                       URGENT NEED TO PROTECT AND
                   EXPAND ABORTION RIGHTS AND ACCESS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                          OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-44

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
      
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
45-899 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                              
                             
                             
                             
                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts      Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee                Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Ro Khanna, California                Michael Cloud, Texas
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Katie Porter, California             Pete Sessions, Texas
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Andy Biggs, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Scott Franklin, Florida
    Georgia                          Jake LaTurner, Kansas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Pat Fallon, Texas
Jackie Speier, California            Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois             Byron Donalds, Florida
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Mike Quigley, Illinois

                     Russell Anello, Staff Director
                       Miles Lichtman, Team Lead
                       Elisa LaNier, Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                  Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
                                 
                                 ------                                
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on September 30, 2021...............................     1

                               Witnesses

Panel 1

The Honorable Cori Bush, Member of Congress, First District of 
  Missouri
    Oral Statement...............................................     7
The Honorable Pramila Jayapal, Member of Congress, Seventh 
  District of Washington
    Oral Statement...............................................     8
The Honorable Kat Cammack, Member of Congress, Third District of 
  Florida
    Oral Statement...............................................    10
The Honorable Barbara Lee, Co-Chair, Congressional Pro-Choice 
  Caucus, Member of Congress, 13th District of California
    Oral Statement...............................................    11
The Honorable Judy Chu, Member of Congress, 27th District of 
  California
    Oral Statement...............................................    13

Panel 2

Ms. Gloria Steinem, Feminist and Social Activist
    Oral Statement...............................................    15
Ms. Melissa Murray, Professor of Law, New York University
    Oral Statement...............................................    17
Dr. Ingrid Skop, Texas-based OB/GYN
    Oral Statement...............................................    18
Ms. Loretta Ross, Co-Founder of the Reproductive Justice 
  Movement, Associate Professor of the Study of Women and Gender, 
  Smith College
    Oral Statement...............................................    20
Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, Texas-based OB/GYN, Board Member, 
  Physicians for Reproductive Health
    Oral Statement...............................................    21
Ms. Maleeha Aziz, Community Organizer, Texas Equal Access Fund
    Oral Statement...............................................    23

 Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses 
  are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository 
  at: docs.house.gov.
                           
                           INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

                              ----------                              

The documents listed below are available at: docs.house.gov.

  * Amicus brief, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 
  et. al; submitted by Rep. Foxx.

  * Article regarding the science of pregnancy and its 
  implications for 
  abortion; submitted by Rep. Biggs.

  * Article opposing the Women's Health Protection Act; submitted 
  by Rep. Biggs.

  * Letter from Students for Life; submitted by Rep. Foxx.

  * Letters from Committee Republicans to Committee Democrats; 
  submitted by Rep. Comer.

  * Letters from Committee Republicans to the Biden 
  Administration; 
  submitted by Rep. Comer.

  * Statements from Texas women; submitted by Rep. Escobar.

  * Trump Twitter slide; submitted by Rep. Krishnamoorthi.

 
                    A STATE OF CRISIS: EXAMINING THE
                       URGENT NEED TO PROTECT AND
                   EXPAND ABORTION RIGHTS AND ACCESS

                              ----------                              


                      Thursday, September 30, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
                 Committee on Oversight and Reform,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom. Hon. 
Carolyn Maloney [chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Connolly, 
Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Khanna, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Porter, 
Bush, Davis, Wasserman Schultz, Welch, Johnson, Sarbanes, 
Speier, Kelly, Lawrence, DeSaulnier, Gomez, Pressley, Quigley, 
Comer, Gosar, Foxx, Hice, Grothman, Cloud, Gibbs, Higgins, 
Norman, Keller, Biggs, Clyde, Mace, Franklin, LaTurner, Fallon, 
Herrell, Donalds. Donalds, Mace, Herrell, LaTurner, Fallon, 
Clyde, and Franklin.
    Also present: Representatives Chu, Lee, Shrier, Escobar, 
Fletcher, and Cammack.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] The committee will come to 
order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    Today I am once again convening the Committee on Oversight 
and Reform to sound the alarm on the grave threat to abortion 
rights and access in the United States. Nearly two years ago, I 
called my first hearing as chairwoman of this committee to 
examine draconian attempts by state governments, including the 
state of Missouri, to restrict access to abortion care. Since 
then, the threat to abortion rights has only become more dire. 
Millions of Americans are now living in a state where they lack 
meaningful access to abortion care. The right to abortion is 
rendered meaningless without access.
    Most recently, Texas enacted Senate Bill 8, which bans 
abortion after six weeks of pregnancy before many people even 
know they are pregnant. This is really a total ban on abortion. 
The law authorizes private citizens anywhere in the United 
States to sue anyone who assists a person in getting an 
abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and it creates a bounty 
system that can entitle plaintiffs to a $10,000 award. Lawsuits 
have already been filed by people hoping to cash in under this 
dangerous, harmful law. This chilling, far-reaching law turns 
private citizens into vigilantes who can assert control over 
other people's bodies. If we do nothing, the consequences will 
not be limited to Texas.
    The Supreme Court allowed this unprecedented, dangerous 
abortion ban to go into effect, and already medical facilities 
in surrounding states are receiving numerous calls from Texans 
in urgent need of abortion care. And other states hostile to 
abortion rights are following the leadership of S.B. 8. In 
December, the Supreme Court will consider a 15-week abortion 
ban passed in Missouri. This case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's 
Health Organization, poses a direct threat to Roe v. Wade, 
making it a very real possibility that the constitutional right 
to abortion will be overturned in the coming months.
    Let me very clear. Access to abortion is a freedom that is 
essential for Americans' ability to control their own bodies 
and to decide their own futures. Nearly 1 in 4 women in the 
United States will have an abortion in their lifetime, but with 
a hostile Supreme Court, extremist state governments are no 
longer chipping away at constitutional rights. They are 
bulldozing right through them. We must take bold action to 
protect and expand abortion care rights and access.
    Last week, the House of Representatives passed 
Congresswoman Judy Chu's Women's Health Protection Act, which 
would establish a federally protected right to abortion care 
for every person in the United States, no matter where they 
live. I call on the Senate to meet the moment and immediately 
pass this critical bill, but we cannot stop there. We must also 
pass Congresswoman Barbara Lee's EACH Act, which would put an 
end to the harmful funding restrictions of the Hyde Amendment 
that for too long have pushed abortion care out of reach, 
particularly for people of color and people with less income. 
We must ensure access to medication abortion, a process that 
involves just two types of pills that can be taken at home and 
are safer than some medications sold over the counter. Despite 
the thoroughly documented safety of medication abortion, there 
are still onerous, medically unnecessary restrictions on this 
type of care.
    Last, we must enact democracy reforms that will protect 
voting rights for all so that the government more accurately 
reflects the American people. It is completely backward that a 
majority of Americans support preserving abortion rights, 
while, at the same time, more and more states are working to 
block them. We must change that.
    Today we have the privilege of hearing directly from our 
congressional colleagues, who are incredible leaders on issues 
of reproductive rights and access. Their personal experiences 
demonstrate why every person must be able to exercise their 
right to choose abortion, and I am grateful to them for their 
courage and for coming forward to share their stories. We will 
also hear from a distinguished panel of patients, providers, 
advocates, and experts, including the feminist icon, Gloria 
Steinem.
    Now I would like to recognize my colleague on this 
committee, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, for an opening 
statement. Congresswoman Pressley serves as chair of the 
Abortion Rights and Access Task Force of the Pro-Choice Caucus, 
and she is a champion for equitable abortion access and a 
kinder, less stigmatizing world for abortion patients. Ms. 
Pressley, you are now recognized for three minutes.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for convening 
this critically important hearing today.
    Let me make it plain. Abortion care is a constitutional 
right, and this pro-choice Democratic majority--House, Senate, 
and White House--can and must do everything possible to protect 
and guarantee it as such. We find ourselves in the midst of an 
unprecedented wave of coordinated tasks on our reproductive 
freedom and bodily autonomy, and Texas' horrendous and extreme 
S.B. 8 abortion ban underscores the urgency of this moment.
    The year, 2021, has been the most devastating for abortion 
rights in American history. In the midst of an ongoing global 
pandemic that robbed us of more than 690,000 lives and 
disproportionately impacted our most vulnerable and black and 
brown communities, anti-abortion legislators in 47 states 
focused on legislating hurt and harm to push this critical 
healthcare out of reach. These misguided bans will not actually 
prevent all abortions. They simply put safe and necessary 
abortion care out of reach for our most vulnerable, 
specifically our lowest-income sisters, our queer, trans, and 
non-binary siblings, black, Latinx, AAPI, immigrants, disabled, 
and indigenous folks. And none of this is happenstance. It is 
precise. Like the roots of the anti-abortion movement, these 
bans are rooted in patriarchy and white supremacy. They 
perpetuate cycles of poverty and economic inequality and 
exacerbate many of our starkest health disparities. Enough.
    SCOTUS had the chance to call S.B 8. for what it is: a 
blatant violation of the constitutional rights of nearly 7 
million Texans of reproductive age. But from voting rights, to 
housing, to reproductive rights, it is clear the Supreme Court 
is no longer on the side of justice, nor is it on the side of 
the people. It is critical that Congress legislate and combat 
these attacks once and for all. I was proud to see the House 
take swift action to pass the Women's Health Protection Act 
last week, legislation that I co-led alongside my friend and 
colleague, Representative Chu, that finally codify the right to 
abortion care. We must legislate as if the lives and 
livelihoods of our most vulnerable constituents depend on it 
because they do. The Senate and the White House must act 
swiftly to pass this bill and sign it into law.
    It has been 30 days since the Texas law went into effect, 
and each day that goes by without congressional action, more 
and more people are denied their constitutional right to 
critical abortion care. So, Madam Chair, thank you for making 
this hearing a top priority.
    I would like to thank my sisters in service who are joining 
us here today. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you 
for your vulnerability. Thank you for being unapologetic in 
your storytelling and standing in your truth. By doing so, you 
create the space for others to do the same and help us do the 
work of dispelling the shame and stigma that has clouded 
abortion for far too long. And while I greatly appreciate your 
bravery, I also look forward to a day where people no longer 
have to relive their trauma in order to advance justice.
    Thank you to the activists, experts, and providers joining 
us today. Thank you to our staffs. And for speaking truth to 
power and ensuring that Congress remains steadfast in our 
efforts to affirm reproductive rights and justice for all, I am 
proud to be your partner in this fight. Thank you. I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. I now recognize the 
distinguished ranking member, Mr. Comer, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney. The question of 
access to abortion is an issue that has been and should be left 
to the states, but that is not to say there is not a role for 
the Federal Government in protecting life. We must continue to 
prevent taxpayer funding from being used for abortion services 
as we learn more through modern science about an unborn child's 
development and ability to feel pain.
    Yet here we are having a hearing about a state's abortion 
law. We are not having a hearing about the border crisis, a 
humanitarian and national security crisis created by the Biden 
Administration. We are not having a hearing on the disastrous 
Afghanistan withdrawal, another humanitarian and national 
security crisis created by the Biden Administration, a crisis 
where a terrorist attack has already murdered 13 Marines and 
many more Afghans with the politically motivated deadly drone 
strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, with 
many Americans and green card holders left behind, not to 
mention all of our allies, including women and girls, left to 
be tortured and murdered by the Taliban regime.
    No, we are not having a hearing on those pressing issues. 
We are not even having a hearing on the economy with rising 
consumer prices and labor shortages. We are having another 
hearing on a state law, on an issue over which this committee 
has absolutely no jurisdiction. We have sent 20 letters to you, 
Madam Chair, asking for hearings and investigations. We have 
not had a hearing on a single one of these issues.
    Let me throw out some more stats. In 2019, there was a 
Republican in the White House and Democrats controlled the 
House. This committee, the Oversight Committee, held almost 80 
hearings with almost 80 Administration witnesses. So far this 
year, with only a few weeks left, less than half as many 
hearings and less than a third as many Administration 
witnesses. And in 2017, when there was a Republican in the 
White House and Republicans running this House and this 
committee, this committee, the Oversight Committee, held almost 
70 hearings with 112 Administration witnesses. One hundred and 
twelve. So the Republicans took oversight seriously even when 
there was a Republican President. But with President Biden in 
the White House, oversight is off the agenda. Apparently we 
cannot be bothered with it.
    This is the U.S. House of Representatives. We are a part of 
Congress, a separate branch of government. We are not in the 
executive branch. It is our constitutional obligation to be 
conducting oversight over the executive branch. Rather than do 
anything remotely close, we are sprinting away from it to the 
detriment of our institution, to the detriment of the American 
people.
    Now, I yield the remainder of my time to Congresswoman 
Foxx.
    Ms. Foxx. I thank Ranking Member Comer for yielding. Those 
of us on our side of the dais see this as a very solemn day. It 
appears that the purpose of this hearing is to normalize the 
destruction of unborn babies, which is called abortion. Let me 
say at the outset that I feel profound sorrow for any woman who 
believes that she must destroy her unborn child, and I 
certainly extend that to our colleagues here today. Instead of 
glorifying this awful act of desperation, we ought to grieve 
for the tens of millions of Americans who never had a chance to 
take their first breath, to see their mother's face, or even to 
cry for help.
    Children in the womb are people. They are our sons, 
daughters, future teachers, future Members of Congress. They 
are innocent lives who do not deserve death. I refuse to 
normalize abortion and reject its very premise that the 
sacrifice of an innocent life that cannot speak for itself is 
justified in any way. We live in a society that mistakes choice 
for liberty and denies the dignity of unborn life, but the 
beauty of living in a free country is that we can use our 
liberty for love. We must put love into action every day, 
affirming the value of life at all stages, no matter the 
difficulties it presents.
    Striving to love daily is not easy, yet it is the greatest 
exercise of our freedom, and there is no life unworthy of that 
love. Those who are attempting to normalize the destruction of 
the innocent unborn do so through language that denies what 
they are doing. Today we will hear many terrible euphemisms--we 
have already heard them--for the slaughter of children. Allow 
me to define some of the terms. Women's health: abortion or 
destruction of innocent unborn babies. And how can this be true 
when half the babies aborted are female? Reproductive freedom: 
the ability to murder a child out of convenience. Abortion 
rights: robbing another of life. Pro-choice: destroying 
innocent life.
    It is important that we not allow these terms to obscure 
what is happening to millions of unborn babies. It is becoming 
a common refrain for many women to say that ``I wouldn't be the 
person I am today if I had not had an abortion.'' Well, I can 
tell you that Representative Kat Cammack literally would not be 
the woman she is today because of abortion. She would not be 
with us, and those of you who promote abortion would not be 
with us if your mothers had had an abortion. We should grieve 
for the millions of children whose lives were ended because 
they were not wanted.
    Whether a pregnancy is planned or unplanned or even the 
result of horrific circumstances, ending that child's life with 
an abortion to empower or protect the ``freedom'' of the mother 
is not an answer. Abortion only compounds the sorrow. How can 
any woman say that her life is better because of abortion? Who 
is anyone to say that? Has she looked into the future and seen 
all the possible arcs of her life? Has she seen the future of 
her unborn child's life and all the possibilities that life 
held? Has she determined that her child's life is not worth 
living?
    Abortion is not prideful. It is not a form of empowerment. 
Motherhood is empowerment. Only women have the ability to bring 
life into the world. Abortion is robbing a woman of motherhood 
and robbing a human being of God's most precious gift: life. 
Life is the most fundamental of all rights. It is sacred and 
God given, but tens of millions of babies have been robbed of 
that right in this, the freest country in the world. This is a 
tragedy beyond words and a betrayal of what we as Nation stand 
for. Before liberty, equality, free speech, freedom of 
conscience, the pursuit of happiness, and justice for all, 
there has to be life, and yet for millions of aborted infants, 
many pain capable and many discriminated against because of 
gender or disability, life is exactly what they have been 
denied. And an affront to life for some is an affront to life 
for every one of us.
    One day we hope it will be different. We hope life will 
cease to be valued on a sliding scale. We hope the era of 
elective abortions ushered in by an unelected Court will be 
closed and collectively deemed one of the darkest chapters of 
American history, but until that day, it remains a solemn duty 
to stand up for life. Regardless of the length of this journey, 
we will continue to speak for those who cannot, and we will 
continue to pray to the One who can change the hearts of those 
in desperation and those in power who equally hold the lives of 
the innocent in their hands. May we, in love, defend the 
unborn. May we, in humility, confront this national sin. And 
may we mourn at what abortion reveals about the conscience of 
our Nation.
    I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. I would 
just like to respond, thank them for their testimony and 
respond to the distinguished Republican minority leader on the 
committee, that at his request and others of this committee, we 
held a classified briefing last week on Afghanistan with 
numerous Administration officials addressing some of the 
questions that he brought up today.
    But today, we have two panels, and our first panel is a 
member panel, so I would like to introduce them first. First we 
have Congresswoman Cori Bush from the 1st District of Missouri, 
who is a valued member of this committee and is a member of the 
freshman class and a Democratic leader in it. Second, we have 
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal from the 7th District of 
Washington, who is chair of the congressional Progressive 
Caucus. Then we will hear from Congresswoman Kat Cammack from 
the 3d District of Florida, who is a leader in the freshman 
class of Republicans. Next, we have Congresswoman Barbara Lee 
from the 13th District of California, who is the co-chair of 
the congressional Pro-Choice Caucus. Last but not least, we 
will hear from Congresswoman Judy Chu from the 27th District of 
California, who is the lead sponsor of the Women's Health 
Protection Act, which was passed by the House of 
Representatives last week.
    Without objection, your written statements will be part of 
the record, and I will note that there will be meetings and 
demonstrations across this country on the same subject, women 
telling their stories. I want to thank you for your courage and 
for coming to testify today.
    With that, Congresswoman Bush, you are now recognized for 
your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. CORI BUSH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM 
                     THE STATE OF MISSOURI

    Ms. Bush. St. Louis and I thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, 
for convening this urgent hearing. It is an honor to join 
Congresswomen Lee, Jayapal, and Chu as part of today's panel, 
and I also want to thank my sister, Congresswoman Pressley, for 
her leadership in this hearing, and to my sisters in service 
for being here with me today, and brother.
    In the summer of 1994, I was a young girl all of 17 years 
old and had just graduated high school. Like so many black 
girls during that time, I was obsessed with fashion and gold 
jewelry and how I physically showed up in the world, but I was 
also very lost. For all of my life, I had been a straight-A 
student with dreams of attending college and becoming a nurse, 
but high school, early on, was difficult for me. I was 
discriminated against, bullied, and as time passed, my grades 
slipped and, along with it, the dream of attaining a full 
scholarship to a historically black college. That summer, I was 
just happy that I passed my classes and that I finished high 
school.
    Shortly after graduating, I went on a church trip to 
Jackson, Mississippi. I had many friends on that trip, and 
while there, I met a boy, a friend of a friend. He was a little 
older than I was, about maybe 20 years old. That first day we 
met, we flirted. We talked on the phone. While on the phone, he 
asked me could he come over to my room. I was bunking with a 
friend and hanging out and said he could stop by, but he didn't 
show up for a few hours, and by the time he did, it was so late 
that my friend and I had gone to bed. I answered the door and 
quietly told him he could come in, imagining that we would talk 
and laugh like we had done over the phone. But the next thing I 
knew, he was on top of me, messing with my clothes, and not 
saying anything at all. What is happening, I thought. I didn't 
know what to do. I was frozen in shock just laying there as his 
weight pressed down upon me. When he was done, he got up, he 
pulled up his pants, and without a word, he left. That was it. 
I was confused. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I asked 
myself, was it something that I had done? The next morning, I 
wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to say something to him, 
but he refused to talk to me. By the time that trip ended, we 
still hadn't spoken at all.
    About a month after the trip, I turned 18. A few weeks 
later, I realized I had missed my period. I reached out to a 
friend and asked the guy from the church trip to contact me. I 
waited for him to reach out, but he never did. I never heard 
from him. I was 18, I was broke, and I felt so alone. I blamed 
myself for what had happened to me, but I knew I had options. I 
had known other girls who had gone to a local clinic to get 
birth control and some who had gotten abortions, so I looked 
through the yellow pages and scheduled an appointment.
    During my first visit, I found out that I was nine weeks 
pregnant, and then and there the panic set in. How could I make 
this pregnancy work? How could I, at 18 years old and barely 
scraping by, support a child on my own? And I would've been on 
my own. I was stressed out knowing that the father wouldn't be 
involved, and I feared my parents would kick me out of the 
home. The best parents in the world, but I feared they would 
kick me out. My dad was a proud father and was always bragging 
about his little girl and how he knew I would go straight to 
college and become attorney general. That was his goal for me. 
So with no scholarship intact and college out of the 
foreseeable future, I couldn't bear the thought of 
disappointing my dad again. I knew it was a decision I had to 
make for myself, so I did.
    My abortion happened on a Saturday. There were a few other 
people in the clinic waiting room, including one other young 
black girl. I overheard the clinic staff talking about her 
saying she had ruined her life and ``That's what they do,'' 
``they'' being black girls like us. Before the procedure, I 
remember going in for counseling and being told that if I move 
forward with this pregnancy, my baby would be jacked up because 
the fetus was already malnourished and underweight, being told 
that if I had this baby, I would wind up on food stamps and 
welfare. I was being talked to like trash and it worsened my 
shame. Afterwards, while in the changing area, I heard some 
girls, all white, talking about how they were told how bright 
their futures were, how loved their babies would be if they 
were adopted, and that their options and their opportunities 
were limitless.
    In that moment, listening to those girls, I felt anguish. I 
felt like I had failed. I went home. My body ached, and I had 
this heavy bleeding. I felt so sick. I felt dizzy, nauseous. I 
felt like something was missing. I felt alone, but I also felt 
so resolved in my decision. Choosing to have an abortion was 
the hardest decision I had ever made, but at 18 years old, I 
knew it was the right decision for me. It was freeing knowing I 
had options. Even still, it took a long for me to feel like me 
again until most recently when I decided to give this speech.
    So to all the black women and girls who have had abortions 
and will have abortions, we have nothing to be ashamed of. We 
live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice 
for us. So we deserve better. We demand better. We are worthy 
of better, so that's why I'm here to tell my story. So today, I 
sit before you as that nurse, as that pastor--as that pastor--
as that activist, that survivor, that single mom, that 
Congresswoman to testify that in the summer of 1994, I was 
raped, I became pregnant, and I chose to have an abortion.
    I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Congresswoman Jayapal, you 
are now recognized for your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. PRAMILA JAYAPAL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                  FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

    Ms. Jayapal. Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking Member Comer, 
thank you for inviting me to speak today. I speak to you as one 
of the 1 in 4 women in America who have had an abortion. And 
for you to understand how I ultimately decided to have an 
abortion, I have to start earlier with the birth of my first 
child, Janak.
    Janak was born at 26-and-a-half weeks while I was on a two-
year fellowship living in India. They weighed only 1 pound, 14 
ounces, and upon birth, went down to a weight of just 21 
ounces. Janak was so small, they fit in the palm of my hand, 
the size of a medium-sized squash. For three months, we did not 
know if Janak would live or die. They needed multiple blood 
transfusions, had to be fed drop by drop, and constantly had 
their heart stop and start. We returned to the United States 
after three months. In those early intensely difficult years, 
Janak had hydrocephalus--water on the brain--seizures, and 
repeatedly returned to the emergency room because of life-
threatening pneumonia. The fact that Janak is a 25-year-old 
beautiful human being is a true miracle and the greatest gift 
in my life.
    At the same time that Janak was born, I was also fighting 
to keep my legal permanent residence status, married to a U.S. 
citizen with a U.S. citizen child now. In the end, I was able 
to return to the United States with Janak, provided that I 
started from scratch to qualify for citizenship. As a new mom 
taking care of a very sick baby and recovering from major 
surgery myself, I was struggling. I experienced severe 
postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that 
was only diagnosed after I contemplated suicide and realized I 
needed to seek help.
    My marriage did not survive. We split custody of Janak, and 
I was a part-time single parent. Shortly after, I met a 
wonderful man who is my husband today. I knew I was not ready 
to have another child, so I religiously took my daily 
contraceptive pill. Despite that, I became pregnant. I 
consulted with my doctors who told me that any future pregnancy 
would likely also be high risk to me and the child, similar to 
what I had gone through with Janak. I very much wanted to have 
more children, but I simply could not imagine going through 
that again. After discussions with my partner, who was 
completely supportive of whatever choice I made, I decided to 
have an abortion. Two decades later, I think about those 
moments on the table in the doctor's office, a doctor who was 
kind and compassionate and skilled, performing abortions in a 
state that recognizes a person's constitutional right to make 
their choices about their reproductive care. For me, 
terminating my pregnancy was not an easy choice, the most 
difficult I've made in my life, but it was my choice, and that 
is what must be preserved for every pregnant person.
    Until 2019, I never spoke publicly or privately about my 
abortion. In fact, I did not even tell my mother about it. Some 
of it was because as an immigrant from a culture that deeply 
values children, and in an American society that still 
stigmatizes abortion, suicide, and mental health needs, I felt 
shame that I never should have felt. Two years ago, I decided 
to tell my story as a Member of Congress because I was so 
deeply concerned about the abortion ban legislation that was 
coming out from states across the country.
    Today, I am testifying before you because I want you to 
know that there are so many different situations that people 
face in making these choices. Whether the choice to have an 
abortion is easy or hard, whether there are traumatic 
situations or not, none of that should be the issue. It is 
simply nobody's business what choices we as pregnant people 
make about our own bodies. And let me clear. I would never tell 
people who don't choose to have an abortion that they should do 
so, nor should they tell me that I shouldn't. This is a 
constitutionally protected, intensely personal choice.
    I did not suffer the economic issues that so many poor and 
black and brown and Latinx people suffer. I did not suffer from 
living in a state that does not allow pregnant people to make 
these choices. And unlike one of my colleagues who is 
testifying today, I had the privilege of experiencing the world 
in a post-Roe v. Wade time where abortion was established as a 
constitutional right. Because of the cruel Texas abortion ban 
and the other state abortion bans currently being litigated by 
those unaffected by the outcome, many people may not have the 
same choice as I did. That is unacceptable. Abortion bans are 
not just a political issue. They do real harm to people across 
the country and in our most vulnerable communities.
    I am so proud today to be testifying alongside fellow women 
of color, Members of Congress, about the need to protect our 
right to control our bodies. It is time to make the Women's 
Health Protection Act law, to repeal the Hyde Amendment, and to 
remove the stigma around abortion care and reproductive health 
choices. I thank you for the time, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you very much. I now recognize 
Congresswoman Cammack. You are now recognized for your 
testimony.

  STATEMENT OF HON. KAT CAMMACK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                   FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

    Mrs. Cammack. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Good morning and 
thank you for having me here today on this panel. Thank you to 
Ranking Member Comer. I appreciate everything that you all do 
here.
    Distinguished members of this committee, I am pleased to be 
with you this morning, though I wish my testimony came here 
under better circumstances. Right now, our country is facing a 
number of crises that House Democrats have been loath to 
acknowledge or make progress toward fixing: the crisis in 
Afghanistan, Americans still stranded, border crisis with 
record crossings, and a humanitarian public health disaster 
unfolding on a daily basis. Now we are looking at stripping one 
of the longest provisions in U.S. history, the Hyde Amendment. 
Meanwhile, the majority members of this committee, who have 
direct oversight over the very issues I just mentioned, have 
chosen to spend valuable time glorifying and normalizing 
abortion instead of doing what this committee should: properly 
overseeing the very crises that my colleagues and I have been 
raising alarm bells about for months.
    However, today I want to speak to you about a very personal 
aspect of my own story that propels me each and every single 
day in this body. As I said last week on the House floor and 
while defending life dozens of times prior, I was not supposed 
to be here. I would not be here had it not been for the very 
brave choice that my mother made 33 years ago. See, when my mom 
was pregnant with my sister at age 27, a single mom, she 
suffered a devastating stroke. It took her a year-and-a-half to 
learn how to walk again, basic motor skills, and to this day 
still struggles. Miraculously, she was able to deliver a 
healthy baby girl, and many years later when she was pregnant 
with me, she found, through the advice of her doctors, that, 
no, it was highly unlikely, if not impossible, for not only her 
to survive, but me as well.
    So you can imagine the fear, the disappointment, the 
struggle, the internal anguish that my mother felt as doctors 
told her that she needed to abort her child. You can imagine 
the pain that she felt when her own family told her that she 
needed to abort her child, but because of her strength, she 
chose life. That wasn't an easy decision for a single mom, for 
a working-class mom, someone herself who had lived a life of 
disappointments, of struggle, addiction, and yet, despite 
everything, she chose life.
    She did something that many of my colleagues here could've 
done. Every woman's story is different. Every woman's story is 
different, and these decisions do not come easy. But I am 
grateful every single day that there were resources available 
for my mom because in that moment she chose life, and those 
resources were available to her as a single mom. My mom 
survived. I survived, and I am a living, breathing witness of 
the power of life and the incredible choice that my own mother 
made, and I get emotional about it. I think this issue, 
everyone gets emotional about, and knowing that you were never 
supposed to survive, it gives you a new perspective about life. 
For that and my mother's choice, I am incredibly grateful.
    There are millions of women out there, like my mom, who 
made the same decision that she did. With her decision, we were 
able to go as the daughter of a single mother, from homeless to 
the House of Representatives. That is only possible in America, 
and that is only possible in an America that values life 
because we were built on the premise of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. It begins with life, and I know there has 
been a lot of talk about justice here today. What about the 
justice for those unborn, all the little girls that never had a 
shot? Where was their choice? It is because this body is saying 
that they don't get a choice. They don't get a shot at life, 
and that is why we here today, as defenders and warriors of the 
unborn, want to make sure that every little boy and every 
little girl has a shot to achieve the American Dream, that same 
American Dream that has allowed me to be here speaking to you 
today.
    Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for allowing me to share my 
story, my mother's story here today. Thank you to all my 
colleagues. And to anyone watching who may one day may be faced 
with this decision, and I pray they choose life.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Congresswoman Lee, you are 
now recognized for your testimony.

  STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA LEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 
                  FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Ms. Lee. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairwoman 
Maloney, and members, and my colleagues for having this very 
important hearing and for inviting me to join this panel. As 
co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus, as a black woman, a woman 
born in Texas, these state-level abortion bans, like Texas S.B. 
8, are deadly. I know what this means for black people, and 
brown people, and people with low incomes.
    Today I share for the first time publicly a very difficult 
personal story, hoping that it will help de-stigmatize 
accessing abortion care. I am sharing my story, even though I 
truly believe it is personal and really nobody's business, and 
certainly not the business of politicians. But I am compelled 
to speak out because of the real risks of the clock being 
turned back to those days before Roe v. Wade, to the days when 
I was a teenager and had a back-alley abortion in Mexico.
    I was raised in El Paso, Texas and attended Catholic 
school, so, of course, growing up, sex education was 
nonexistent. Adolescent, sexual, and reproductive health were 
not discussed in a meaningful way, and because of that, I 
honestly wasn't sure how you got pregnant. Most of what I 
learned about sex and relationships was from pages of magazines 
and hearsay from my peers. I lived in a loving, extended family 
household with my wonderful parents and grandparents who wanted 
me to make straight A's, practice the piano day and night, and, 
of course, stay away from boys.
    Now, after grammar school, we moved to California, and 
later when I just turned 16, I missed my period. I was 
confused, afraid, and unsure, not knowing if I was pregnant or 
not. I didn't know what to do. Now, in those days--mind you, 
this is in the mid-1960's--women and girls were told if you 
didn't have a period, you should take quinine pills, sit in a 
tub of water, or use a coat hanger if nothing else worked. My 
mother noticed I became introverted and very quiet, so she 
asked me what was going on with me. At that point, I told her 
everything. I told her that I maybe, maybe not could be 
pregnant. She responded with love. She was supportive and 
sympathetic and took me to the doctor who confirmed I was 
pregnant.
    Now, my mother asked me if I wanted to get an abortion. She 
didn't demand or force me but understood that this was my 
personal decision and a choice that I needed to make, and she 
would support me regardless. Now mind you, I was the first 
black cheerleader in my high school, got very good grades, was 
active in my church, and a member of the Honor Society, and an 
accomplished pianist. In fact, I won two music scholarships. So 
I felt embarrassed and thought if anyone found out, my life 
would be destroyed.
    It was so important for me to have someone I trusted to 
help me with this decision, so once I made this decision 
prayerfully, one of my mother's best friends in El Paso helped 
me access the abortion I could not get in California. When my 
mother told her what was going on, she told my mother to send 
me to her in El Paso because she knew of a good, competent, and 
compassionate doctor, yes, who had a back-alley clinic in 
Mexico. She was kind and loving and took me to Mexico to have a 
DNC abortion procedure. Remember, I had just turned 16.
    Now, I was one of the lucky ones, Madam Chair. A lot of 
girls and women in my generation didn't make it. They died from 
unsafe abortions. In the 1960's, unsafe septic abortions were 
the primary killer--primary killer--of African American women. 
My personal experience shaped my beliefs to fight for people's 
reproductive freedom. And when I was elected to the California 
Legislature, one of the first bills I authored and was signed 
into law was to enhance penalties on people who were blocking 
access to abortion clinics for those seeking care. It also 
shaped much of my work in Congress. My lack of sexual education 
was why I authored H.R. 3312, the Real Education and Access to 
Healthy Youth Act, which provides comprehensive sex ed to young 
people in schools, which I hope all of you will co-sponsor.
    Now, in 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided in the Supreme Court, 
which affirmed the right to an abortion. Shortly after Roe, I 
was a congressional staffer for the late, our beloved 
Congressman Ron Dellums. Henry Hyde introduced the Hyde 
Amendment blocking insurance coverage for abortion for low-
income and poor people. And he said, ``I certainly would like 
to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion--a 
rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,'' and then 
he went on to say, ``Unfortunately, the only vehicle available 
is the Medicaid bill.'' The Hyde Amendment, from its inception, 
was racist and discriminatory and aimed at people with low 
incomes and people of color. And so I am proud to be the lead 
co-sponsor of the EACH Act.
    This year for the first time, we fought hard to remove the 
Hyde Amendment from the 2022 House appropriations bill. Now, 
today, on the 45th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment's passage, 
I think about people like Rosie Jimenez, a Latina who died 
because the Hyde Amendment denied her the ability to have a 
safe abortion because her insurance would not cover it. This is 
why I share my story with all of you today. I have two 
wonderful sons, five grandchildren. I don't want them or anyone 
to experience a world without access to the full range of 
reproductive services, including abortions. I want them and 
every person to be able to make their own decisions about their 
bodies and their lives.
    Last week, I was proud to have voted for the Women's Health 
Protection Act led by our brilliant colleague, Congresswoman 
Judy Chu, but we can't stop there. We continue to witness 
states attempting to take us back to the days I know so well. 
We cannot and will not return to those days before Roe, and we 
will be watching the Supreme Court decisions.
    Yes, members, this is my story, as hard as it is to talk 
about it. I hope that regardless of your personal views, it 
will help you understand, understand that people deserve a 
right to make their own reproductive decisions about their 
lives, their bodies, and their futures. Thank you, and I yield 
back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Thank you very much. 
Congresswoman Chu, you are now recognized for your testimony. 
Congresswoman Chu.

 STATEMENT OF HON. JUDY CHU, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM 
                    THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Ms. Chu. Chair Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, and members 
of the committee, I want to thank you for holding today's 
important hearing in which we've heard so many moving stories. 
I'm here to talk about the hardship faced by individuals who 
cannot access the full range of reproductive health options due 
to burdensome state laws and how we can help, thanks to my bill 
that passed the House last week, H.R. 3755, the Women's Health 
Protection Act.
    Everyone deserves equal access to comprehensive and safe 
reproductive healthcare, no matter where they live, free from 
political interference. But anti-abortion extremists have been 
working ever since the passage of Roe v. Wade to put abortion 
services out of reach for as many Americans as possible. Texas' 
S.B. 8 is just the latest example. The Texas law is egregious 
and downright chilling. It deputizes vigilantes to harass 
anyone helping someone obtain an abortion, from a doctor to 
clinic staff to an Uber driver. And it prohibits abortions at 
six weeks, before most even know that they are pregnant.
    But it is not an outlier. Since 2011, anti-abortion 
extremists have introduced nearly 500 of these restrictive 
state laws. For instance, they've had mandatory ultrasounds, 
waiting periods, or funerals for fetuses, all meant to shame 
people who access abortion care, while needless requirements, 
like wider doors or hospital admitting privileges, are meant to 
make it harder for a doctor to be able to practice medicine, 
forcing them to close their doors or turn away patients. None 
of these restrictions make abortion care safer, and instead 
impose an undue hardship on those seeking an abortion.
    This is a coordinated nationwide strategy to eliminate 
abortion access and provide an opportunity to overturn or 
undermine Roe. In 2019 alone, 18 states passed 46 laws 
restricting or banning abortion, including Georgia, Kentucky, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, Ohio, and Alabama. The result is that 
abortion access is often determined by an individual's zip 
code. Nearly 90 percent of American counties are without a 
single abortion provider, and six states are down to their last 
abortion clinic. No constitutional right should be contingent 
on where you live.
    My bill, the Women's Health Protection Act, will put a stop 
to these state-based attacks and enshrine the protections of 
Roe into law by ensuring that providers have the right to 
provide and patients have the right to receive abortions free 
of medically unnecessary restrictions. The Women's Health 
Protection Act will ensure that no matter where someone lives, 
no matter their zip code, abortion access is a right for all.
    Weakening or overturning Roe poses a threat to our 
fundamental rights to make a personal decision beyond abortion, 
including who to have intimate relationships with, who to 
marry, and whether to use contraception. That's why I'm so 
proud that last week the House took the historic step of 
passing the legislation, and, in fact, it was the first 
affirmative abortion rights vote in nearly 25 years. And it 
shows the American people that we will not abandon them.
    The Supreme Court has announced its intention to hear 
Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Dobbs, a case that 
directly challenges Roe v. Wade, this December. The Mississippi 
ban threatens abortion providers with severe penalties for 
providing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It defies 
nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent going back to Roe 
that recognizes that the Constitution guarantees each person 
the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. There is 
no path for the Supreme Court to uphold Mississippi's ban 
without overturning Roe's core holding that every pregnant 
person has the right to decide whether to continue their 
pregnancy prior to viability.
    Abortion restrictions are part of the intertwined systems 
of oppression that deny black, indigenous, and people of color 
their constitutional rights. The people most hurt by these 
restrictions are those who already face barriers to healthcare. 
I am pleased to say that Senate Majority Leader Schumer has 
announced his intention to bring WHPA to the Senate floor for a 
vote so we can ensure that regardless of what happens at the 
Supreme Court, women are free to make decisions about their 
lives and bodies in consultation with their families and their 
physicians, not politicians.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I thank all of you for your extremely 
powerful testimony and for sharing your stories. There will be 
demonstrations across the country this weekend where women, 
following your leadership, will share their stories. I am 
grateful for your being here today and for your dedication to 
helping other people.
    The panel is now excused, and we will pause for a moment 
while we get the second panel ready.
    [Pause.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Now I would like to introduce our 
second panel of witnesses.
    Our first witness today is Gloria Steinem, who is a 
longtime feminist who has dedicated her life to protecting 
women's rights. She brings a unique perspective having worked 
for Voters for Choice and advocated for the right to an 
abortion even before the Roe v. Wade decision. Then we will 
hear from Melissa Murray who is a professor of law at New York 
University. Next we will hear from Dr. Isabel Skop, who is a 
Texas-based OB/GYN. Next we will hear from Loretta Ross who is 
the co-founder of the Reproductive Justice Movement and is an 
associate professor of the study of women and gender at Smith 
College. Next we will hear from Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, who is 
also a Texas-based OB/GYN and is a board member of Physicians 
for Reproductive Health. Finally, we will hear from Maleeha 
Aziz, who is a community organizer with the Texas Equal Access 
Fund.
    The witnesses will be unmuted so that we can swear them in. 
Please raise your right hands.
    Do you swear or affirm the testimony that you are about to 
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
    And without objection, your written statements will be made 
part of the record.
    And with that, Ms. Gloria Steinem, you are now recognized 
for your testimony.

   STATEMENT OF GLORIA STEINEM, FEMINIST AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST

    Ms. Steinem. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here 
today. I accepted this invitation because I bet I'm one of the 
few people old enough to remember how bad it was when abortion 
was illegal. That's why what is happening in Texas is not only 
a local issue or a women's issue. It is a step against 
democracy which allows us to control our own bodies and our own 
voices. Remember when Hitler was elected, and he was elected, 
his very first official act was to padlock the family planning 
clinics and declare abortion a crime against the state. 
Mussolini did exactly the same thing because they knew that 
controlling reproduction and nationalizing women's bodies is 
the first step in an all-controlling state.
    The huge majority of American women stand for democracy and 
in opposition to Texas Senate Bill 8. We do not want to have 
our bodies nationalized. Otherwise, we will be very close to 
turning back the clock to the days of the 1950's when 1 in 3 
women had an illegal and a dangerous abortion. What were those 
days like? Well, you know, I was there, and I can tell you, as 
many older women can, they were filled with danger for women 
and guilt for both women and men. It was a time when 1 in 3 or 
4 needed an abortion at some time in their lives, and so they 
had to enter into a criminal underground without even the most 
basic medical safeguards or protection from sexual exploitation 
by the doctors themselves.
    In the 1950's, I lived this situation which was also true 
in England. I was working as a waitress in London on my way to 
India. I had left an engagement to a very nice man here at 
home, who we both knew, I think, that marriage would not be the 
right thing for us, and I was awaiting a visa for that trip to 
India. That fellowship was to be my bridge to a different life, 
yet I also had realized that I was pregnant. After what seemed 
to be an eternity of confusion and fear, I found a very kind 
and brave English doctor who was willing to help me by using a 
loophole in the law that allowed an abortion if he signed a 
statement saying that pregnancy was dangerous to my physical or 
mental health. And he said, but you must promise me two things: 
you must never tell anyone my name, and you must do what you 
want to do with your life. I'm sure that man is no longer with 
us and has not been for many years, yet I am grateful to him to 
this day and I dedicated a book to him.
    Now, in this country, so many want to declare a fertilized 
egg to be a legal person, thus not only criminalizing abortion 
but nationalizing women's bodies throughout our childbearing 
years by establishing a direct relationship between the 
government and a fertilized egg. Indeed, the laws already in 
existence deprive poor women who must depend on the government 
for healthcare, young women without parental or judicial 
permission, and even women in the U.S. military, all deprived 
of the reproductive rights available to other women. Many of 
them are already the victims of illegal and unsafe abortions 
that have become their only recourse.
    In the 1950's, the fact that I could be helped was all that 
was significant. I could not have had the same safe and legal 
abortion if I had stayed in the United States, where draconian 
anti-abortion laws, like those now threatened again, were 
causing even more deaths than in England. Even so, I could 
afford to find a way out as most women could not.
    What would a return to the dark days of U.S. history mean? 
I remember women who died from septic abortions. I remember 
children who were left motherless by women who simply wanted to 
have no more children than they could afford to care for. 
Already the anti-abortion right wing has created such martyrs 
as Rosie Jimenez who died in 1977, the first of many women to 
be killed by the Hyde Amendment that denies Medicaid funding 
for abortion, or Becky Bell who died in 1988, the first of many 
young women to be killed by the parental consent laws that 
caused her to seek an illegal abortion rather than disappoint a 
loving family.
    Standing up for reproductive justice in Texas is not only 
standing up for women. It is very simply standing up for 
democracy. Without decision-making power over our own bodies, 
there is no democracy. We cannot, we must not nationalize 
woman's bodies. We must let each woman make this decision for 
herself. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Professor Murray, you are 
now recognized for your testimony. Professor Murray.

    STATEMENT OF MELISSA MURRAY, PROFESSOR OF LAW, NEW YORK 
                    UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW

    Ms. Murray. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking 
Member Comer. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you 
in these hearings on the state of crisis in abortion access in 
our country. My name is Melissa Murray. I am the Frederick I. 
and Grace Stokes professor of law at New York University School 
of Law, where I teach constitutional law, family law, and 
reproductive rights and justice and serve as the faculty 
director of the Birnbaum Women's Leadership Network. Prior to 
my appointment at NYU, I was the Alexander F. and May Treat 
Morrison professor of law at the University of California, 
Berkley, where I taught for 12 years and served as a faculty 
director of the Berkeley Center on Reproductive Rights and 
Justice, and as the interim dean of the law school.
    In 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized 
that the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of liberty protects a 
woman's right to determine whether to bear or beget a child. 
Since then, the Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the 
right to abortion as an essential aspect of the Constitution's 
guarantees of liberty and equality. In so doing, the Court has 
made clear that states may not ban abortion before viability or 
restrict abortion in ways that are unduly burdensome. More 
precisely, states may not enact legislation that has the 
purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path 
of a person seeking an abortion.
    Still, despite these longstanding precedents, state 
legislatures have continued to test the Constitution's limits 
by enacting increasingly restrictive abortion laws. In the 
previous decade, the anti-abortion movement sought to legislate 
abortion out of existence through piecemeal attacks. The goal 
was to gut the undue burden standard so that the right was 
essentially meaningless. However, changes in the composition of 
the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower Federal Courts have 
emboldened state legislatures to pursue an even more aggressive 
and extreme agenda, flouting the limits that the Supreme Court 
has consistently recognized.
    Those responsible for those laws have made their intentions 
clear. No longer content to chip away at the abortion right 
through piecemeal legislation, these more recent laws are an 
obvious provocation designed to relitigate and ultimately 
overturn Roe v. Wade, and now they have their chance and they 
are fully embracing it. In December, the Supreme Court will 
hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a challenge 
to Mississippi H.B. 1510, which bans abortion after 15 weeks, 
in defiance of longstanding constitutional precedent that 
prohibits states from banning abortions before viability. In 
its brief before the Court, Mississippi not only entreats the 
Court to uphold its unconstitutional ban. It also explicitly 
invites the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned 
Parenthood v. Casey.
    The Supreme Court's recent treatment of a petition 
involving S.B. 8, Texas' flagrantly unconstitutional abortion 
law, suggests that the Court may well be amenable to this 
prospect. Noting the law's procedural irregularities, five 
justices set aside nearly five decades' worth of precedent, 
allowing S.B. 8's six-week ban to take effect and effectively 
overturn the legal right to abortion in Texas. Today marks the 
30th day that people in Texas have woken up with fewer 
constitutional rights than the rest of the country. No matter 
what the Court does moving forward, we will not be able to 
erase how its actions failed Texans and our Constitution.
    Roe is deeply woven into our country's fabric. People have 
firmly supported the fundamental right to abortion for decades 
and have relied on Roe's protections in their lives. If the 
Court tugs at the threads that undergird Roe, the impact would 
not be limited to abortion rights. This legal unraveling would 
implicate a range of rights that, like Roe, rest on 
constitutional protections for liberty and equality: the right 
to marry the person of one's choice, the right of parents to 
raise their children in the manner of their choosing, the right 
to procreate. If Roe falls, it would endanger all of these 
rights as well. It would also put at serious risk our country's 
notions of the rule of law, the legitimacy of the judiciary, 
and the principle of deference to longstanding precedents.
    In conclusion, I hope that as you consider ways to support 
and protect the constitutional right to abortion, you will keep 
these urgent threats to the rule of law in mind as well as the 
communities who are most harmed by them. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Dr. Skop, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.
    [No response.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. We can't hear you. Speak up. Turn your 
mic on.
    Dr. Skop. Oh.

       STATEMENT OF INGRID SKOP, M.D., TEXAS-BASED OB/GYN

    Dr. Skop. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the 
committee. I am Dr. Ingrid Skop. I'm a Board-certified OB/GYN 
from San Antonio. In the past 29 years, I have delivered over 
5,000 babies. Each of these children has made a tremendous 
impact on the lives of the people surrounding them, although 
many of them were not intentionally conceived.
    The Texas Heartbeat Act has reminded us of an inconvenient 
fact. A month after conception, a fetus develops a heartbeat, 
which is universally recognized as a sign of life. Nearly 50 
years ago, the Supreme Court contended it could not resolve the 
difficult question of whether this was a life. Today we cannot 
plead ignorance. We have all seen ultrasounds, pictures of the 
unborn demonstrating he is just like us, only smaller and more 
in need of our care. The abortion debate has been obscured by 
euphemisms that allow us to mask the horror of the action. We 
have created a class of humans considered unworthy of life on 
their own merits, valuable only if someone else desires them. 
This is the definition of genocide. We need to re-examine this 
as a scientific and human rights issue, not through the lens of 
political partisanship or social engineering.
    The Women's Health Protection Act seeks to codify Roe. Do 
you all know what Roe does? Roe allows abortion at any time in 
pregnancy if it can be justified as benefiting the health of 
the woman. ``Health'' is broadly defined as physical, 
emotional, social, familial, and age factors, encompassing 
almost every stated reason for abortion. This legislation will 
hurt, not protect, women because maternal mortality is 76 times 
higher after an abortion at five months as compared to two.
    Researchers affiliated with the abortion industry have 
ignored known limitations in the voluntary U.S. data 
collection, publishing papers reassuring us that abortion is 
very safe, but better-quality international records linkage 
studies demonstrate frequent complications after abortion. We 
did not believe the tobacco industry when it told us their 
product was safe. Shouldn't we be skeptical of similar claims 
from the abortion industry?
    About 86,000 abortions occur yearly after the first 
trimester when the unborn human might feel pain, and about 
11,000 occur after he can survive separated from his mother. We 
are one of only seven countries worldwide that will allow an 
elective abortion after viability, even though two-thirds of 
Americans support restrictions after the first trimester. A 
complicated D&E dismemberment abortion may cause uterine damage 
or incomplete tissue removal, leading to hemorrhage, infection, 
and even death. I will never forget a young Hispanic mother 
clinging to my hand in the ICU, pleading with me not to let her 
die as her body succumbed to overwhelming sepsis from a late-
term abortion, after Roe. Subsequent pregnancies are also at 
risk if instrumental uterine damage leads to abnormal placental 
attachment or cervical damage causes pre-term delivery.
    Abortion harms the emotional health of some women, leading 
to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicide. 
Surely we can acknowledge that not every woman will benefit 
from this decision. I have seen many women coerced into 
abortion. A young black patient tearfully recalled how her 
mother forced her to undergo an abortion at five months 
gestation. Now pregnant again, her boyfriend told her she could 
not return home until she ended her pregnancy. She strongly 
desired both of her children. Does she have a choice? Children 
born to unmarried mothers have increased from 11 to 40 percent 
of all births since Roe, and this number reaches 67 percent in 
the black community. The narrative of her body/her choice has 
apparently led many men to believe that the decision to bear a 
child belongs to the woman alone, causing them to neglect their 
responsibilities as fathers.
    In addition to my full-time work as an OB/GYN, I am the 
medical director of four pregnancy centers in Texas providing 
free ultrasounds, STI testing and treatment, and resources to 
women in crisis pregnancies. Any Woman Can in San Antonio also 
provides free mental healthcare. The Source Clinics in Houston 
and Austin provide full women's healthcare, including 
contraception and counseling to promote strong relationships 
and healthy sexual behavior.
    Abortion is not a choice to be celebrated, but a decision 
to be grieved. Children are not a burden to be disposed of, but 
a beautiful addition to the life of a family and society. Our 
heroes are people who persevere in adversity. Bearing and 
raising children is not easy, but without this important work, 
a society cannot endure. Let us give motherhood the support and 
respect it deserves and stop promoting the destruction of 
innocent human life. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Ross, you are now 
recognized for your testimony. Ms. Ross.
    [No response.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Please unmute, Ms. Ross.

   STATEMENT OF LORETTA ROSS, CO-FOUNDER OF THE REPRODUCTIVE 
JUSTICE MOVEMENT, AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE STUDY OF WOMEN 
                   AND GENDER, SMITH COLLEGE

    Ms. Ross. Thank you for inviting me and hearing me out 
today. I don't have written testimony because I feel the need 
to speak from my heart because my story disproves many of the 
theories that abortion opponents like to talk about.
    In 1968, I was pregnant in Texas at 14 years old through 
incest from a married cousin who was 27 years old, who, instead 
of babysitting me, thought it was a good idea to get me drunk 
so he could have sex with me. In 1968, I didn't have any 
options. My only choice was whether to have that baby and give 
him up for adoption. But I found that once I had my child, I 
couldn't go through with the adoption because it is not as easy 
as people try to say it is. So for the next 30 years, I ended 
up co-parenting with my rapist, and although I fiercely love my 
son, I hated his circumstances, and that complicated what my 
child should have received, unconditional love from his mother, 
because as he grew up and grew to resemble his father, it was 
always there what had happened to me.
    I was lucky enough two years later to receive a full 
scholarship to Howard University to major in chemistry and 
physics. And when I became pregnant while at Howard University, 
I was also lucky enough to be able to access a legal and safe 
abortion at Washington Hospital Center. And that abortion kept 
me from becoming a teen mother with three children, because I 
was pregnant with twins, at the age of 16. So I didn't have any 
choice whether to have sex, whether to have a child, and it was 
so hard to raise that child born of rape and incest.
    And so, I really don't think it should be more difficult 53 
years later for a child in Texas than it was for me in 1968. I 
really don't think so. And now I am wondering, is it a matter 
of people that don't know our stories, or is it that they don't 
care, because 50 years of telling our stories doesn't seem to 
change the hard heart of people who haven't been through what 
we have been through. And I'm wondering, what does it take?
    So in 1994, because of what I'd been through, I was one of 
12 black women who created the theory of reproductive justice 
because we needed more than what either the pro-choice or the 
pro-life movement offered us, with just the right to have the 
children that we want to have, the right not to have the 
children that we don't want to have, but, most importantly, the 
right to raise those children in safe and healthy environments 
because nobody focuses as much as we need on what happens to 
the children once they are born. And so we have used this 
framework. We have popularized it around the country.
    I am so honored and privileged to be able to tell my story, 
but I am wondering if merely telling my story and all of our 
stories is enough because if you don't care, I don't know what 
it takes to reach your heart. But I can tell you that theory of 
rape and incest--just have the baby and give them up for 
adoption, and, you know, accept that your life will be forever 
changed--if you have not lived that life, then I wonder if you 
really know what you are talking about. And I was very glad 
that I had my son, but I also had a choice two years later 
whether or not I would become a mother of three children and 
sabotage the rest of my life, but mostly, not be able to 
provide for the child I already had because he became the most 
important thing to me, and I celebrate his life by the fact 
that I had choices.
    So thank you all for listening to me. I want you all to 
talk about what it is really like for people who don't have 
choices, who live in Texas, who shouldn't have to go through 
what I went through in San Antonio. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you, Professor Ross. Thank you.
    And Dr. Moayedi, you are now recognized for five minutes.

 STATEMENT OF GHAZALEH MOAYEDI, TEXAS-BASED OB/GYN, AND BOARD 
           MEMBER, PHYSICIANS FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

    Dr. Moayedi. Good morning, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking 
Member Comer, and members of this committee. My name is Dr. 
Ghazaleh Moayedi, and I use ``she/her'' pronouns. I am a Board-
certified OB/GYN, the child of Iranian immigrants, a mom, a 
Texan, and a proud abortion provider. I want to describe how 
different abortion care looks in different parts of our 
country. I am a licensed physician who has practiced in both 
Hawaii and Texas providing expert abortion care, and although I 
am the same physician with the same expert skills and training, 
I am compelled by Texas to provide substandard care to patients 
in Dallas compared to Honolulu.
    Imagine Marie, a 35-year-old American citizen, 18 weeks 
pregnant, working a minimum wage job, and living in Dallas. 
Marie is seeking an abortion prior to S.B. 8 even being 
enacted. She, like most people who have abortions, is already a 
parent and resolute in her abortion decision. Although Marie is 
confident and informed about her abortion, Marie is forced to 
endure multiple harmful restrictions. First, Texas has a law 
that requires abortion after 16 weeks to be provided in an 
ambulatory surgical center, a requirement that has been proven 
to be medically unnecessary and does nothing to improve quality 
or safety. By contrast, Hawaii has no such law restricting 
where abortion care can be provided. If Marie were able to make 
an appointment at one of our two surgical centers in Dallas, 
she cannot have her abortion that day. By Texas law, she must 
make an appointment to see me, a physician, in advance of her 
procedure. As her physician, I am then compelled to force Marie 
into a medically unnecessary ultrasound. I'm compelled to force 
Marie to look at and listen to the ultrasound. I'm compelled to 
force Marie to hear a description of the ultrasound. I'm 
compelled to force Marie to hear medically inaccurate state-
mandated scripts.
    And after all of this, Marie still cannot have her 
abortion. She must return 24 hours later because I am compelled 
to force her to wait, even though it is medically unnecessary 
and goes against my better judgment as a physician. And if one 
of my colleagues is providing care the next day instead of me, 
Marie must wait even longer because Texas forces people to have 
an abortion from the same physician that provided their 
ultrasound. In Honolulu, Marie could call my office for an 
appointment in the morning and be going home in the afternoon.
    To add insult to injury, Medicaid and private insurance are 
barred from covering abortion in Texas. In Hawaii, unless Marie 
is a member of the military or a Federal employee, her health 
insurance or her Medicaid would cover her costs. If she were 
living in Hawaii, Marie would not have to forego food or rent 
or childcare to access her abortion. In Texas, Marie will.
    Today Marie cannot even get her abortion in Dallas. The 
next closest clinic is Oklahoma City, which had a one-month 
waiting list for appointments in the weeks prior to S.B. 8 
going into effect. So by the time Marie is able to schedule her 
appointment, she would be unable to get it in Oklahoma. So now 
we are moving in concentric circles, further and further away 
from her home, and further and further away from hope. This is 
exactly what S.B. 8 intends to do: deny people the ability to 
have an abortion, and this is where we are today.
    Abortion care has almost completely stopped in our state. 
Only a small fraction of patients are able to get the care they 
need in Texas. Clinics are working tirelessly to care for 
everyone they can within the limits and working with abortion 
funds to get everyone else out of the state for care, yet we 
know not everyone will be able to leave the state. The impact 
of this law is devastating. It is terrifying not only for 
people with undesired pregnancies seeking abortion care, but 
for anyone with a highly desired pregnancy who has pregnancy 
complications.
    The consequences are far reaching. Healthcare providers are 
confused. My colleagues are asking if they are still allowed to 
treat an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage. They are worried 
they will have to delay lifesaving care for people who are very 
sick. They're worried about all of the possible chronic 
conditions that can worsen in pregnancy, but not worsen enough 
to warrant an exception under this law. S.B. 8 has not only 
caused a near total abortion ban in Texas. It has made it 
extremely dangerous to be pregnant in Texas where our maternal 
morbidity and mortality rate is already unconscionably high, 
especially for black women and pregnant people of color. Texas 
deserves better.
    I know firsthand that abortion saves lives. For the 
thousands of people I've cared for, abortion is a blessing. 
Abortion is an act of love. Abortion is freedom. We need 
Federal protection now. We need laws that elevate science and 
evidence and recognize the dignity and autonomy of people 
accessing care. The Women's Health Protection Act is an 
important and critical step, but it's not enough. We need 
legislation that will protect pregnant people and birthing 
people in all of their decisions so they can live their 
healthiest lives. But most of all, we need you to not forget 
about us, the people in Texas and other restrictive states, who 
are trying our best to care for ourselves, for our families and 
our communities amidst its efforts to completely control our 
bodies and lives.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Aziz, you are now 
recognized for five minutes.

  STATEMENT OF MALEEHA AZIZ, COMMUNITY ORGANIZER, TEXAS EQUAL 
                          ACCESS FUND

    Ms. Aziz. Good morning, distinguished members of the 
committee. First, I want to begin by thanking Congresswomen 
Lee, Jayapal, and Bush for sharing their abortion stories in an 
interview last night and on the panel prior to this one. Their 
leadership, particularly in this legislative body, is an 
inspiration to me. My name is Maleeha Aziz. I am a mother, a 
survivor of sexual assault, a proud abortion storyteller with 
We Testify, and a community organizer for the Texas Equal 
Access Fund.
    Before S.B. 8 officially became the law, things were 
already dismal, but now they have become a nightmare. Abortion 
funds have been working around the clock to help people access 
abortions with funding assistance, travel support, and more. 
Abortion funds exist to counter the discriminatory, classist, 
and racist restrictions on abortion, like the Hyde Amendment 
and S.B. 8. The authors of S.B. 8 and the people supporting 
this discriminatory and despicable law have made it abundantly 
clear that they do not care about our physical and emotional 
well-being. They are only interested in controlling our bodies.
    As a survivor, I know this feeling all too well, and it 
fills me with rage. I remember feeling helpless and disgusted 
by my own body for a very long time. Sometimes I still do, and 
I am so thankful that I did not become pregnant by my rapist. I 
am angry that we survivors must publicly share our traumas to 
make legislators realize the depravity of this law. At the 
Texas Equal Access Fund, we hear from people all over North 
Texas who need support accessing abortions. We hear panicked 
and anxious calls from clients who are terrified they will be 
forced to remain pregnant.
    Over 80 percent of our clients learn about their pregnancy 
after eight weeks gestation. That is two weeks beyond the limit 
imposed by S.B. 8, forcing them to travel out of state for 
care. Texas does not guarantee paid sick leave. That means 
those who call T Fund for support are not able to earn a wage 
if they miss work for a multi-day medical appointment.
    I can relate to what our clients are going through. Nearly 
eight years ago, I needed an abortion, too. I was a recent 
immigrant to the United States from Pakistan. I was a college 
student navigating a new country, culture, and legal system. 
After affording housing and food, I did not have a lot of money 
left over. Like many people searching for abortion clinics and 
needing an ultrasound, I ended up at a fake clinic, also known 
as a crisis pregnancy center. Despite wearing lab coats, the 
staff were not licensed medical professionals, and Christian 
imagery was all over the walls. I'm Muslim and uncomfortable 
being judged through a Christian lens. They told me that Texas 
banned the abortion pill because it was so dangerous. I 
panicked. Thankfully, a supportive family member covered the 
cost of my abortion and all the travel-related expenses that I 
could not afford.
    My partner and I took the next flight to Colorado Springs 
where I had my abortion at Planned Parenthood. I still remember 
the horrible and vile insults strangers yelled at me as I 
walked into the clinic, which I had to endure twice because I 
had to wait 24 hours before I could have my abortion. I am 
eternally grateful my provider eased my anxiety and calmly 
reminded me that I knew what was best for my body. My friends 
and family stayed with me for a few days. I felt so cared for 
and loved, the way everyone should feel when they are ill or 
having an abortion. My procedure, pain medications, flights, 
hotel, and transportation cost nearly $2,000. With Federal 
policies, like the Hyde Amendment, and state laws that ban 
private insurance from covering abortion procedures, we are 
left to pay for all of these costs out of pocket, despite 
having health insurance.
    A year after the birth of my daughter, I recognized the 
symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe pregnancy sickness 
I have experienced with all of my pregnancies. Due to HG, I was 
physically unable to care for or spend time with the baby I 
chose to have, and it broke my spirit. My husband is active-
duty military and lives four hours away during the week. We 
decided that an abortion was the best decision for our family. 
The love I have for Maya, my daughter, made my second abortion 
the easiest decision that I have ever made. And this time, I 
knew abortion pills were both legal and safe in Texas. My 
abortion helped me create my family I have now, and for that, I 
will forever be grateful. Doing so also made me a better mother 
because I chose motherhood on my terms. I welcomed it with open 
arms.
    Members of Congress, I sit here before you today to ask you 
to show up for those of us who have had abortions and provide 
abortions. No one should be afraid of seeking healthcare, no 
one should be criminally punished for wanting to end their 
pregnancies, and no one should fear asking a loved one for 
support in a time of need. As we see it, we testify. Everyone 
loves someone who has had an abortion. I hope that you listen 
to my story and the stories of countless others. The actions 
that you take impact your constituents and loved ones who have 
had abortions.
    Thank you for listening.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. I thank all the panelists.
    I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.
    Since I have been in Congress, we have never had pro-choice 
majorities until this year. Now we have a pro-choice majority 
in both chambers, including more than 100 Democratic women. The 
American people are solidly on the side of choice with 4 in 5 
people supporting legal abortion. Despite this strong support 
for abortion rights, right now, anti-choice state legislators 
are trying to bulldoze the right to abortion right into the 
ground, and we cannot let that happen.
    Ms. Steinem, thank you for being here today. You spoke 
about your own abortion, and in the early 1970's before Roe v. 
Wade, you pioneered the fight for reproductive rights. But what 
is happening today puts these five decades of progress at risk. 
Ms. Steinem, since Roe v. Wade, has the right to abortion ever 
been under greater risk than it is now, than it is today?
    [No response.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. You need to unmute, Ms. Steinem.
    Ms. Steinem. I do not remember any time at greater risk, 
and I am sorry to say that I believe it is also connected to a 
racial bias in this country because we are at a point when we 
are about to become a majority people of color country, which 
seems to me a great event in a way. We are going to have better 
relationships with other countries in the world, understand 
differences better. But I think there is a profoundly racist 
resistance to the continuation of the right to safe and legal 
abortion, and we see that in the nature of the resistors and 
the nature of their politics. It is absolutely fundamental that 
we control our own bodies. There is no democracy without that. 
We are fighting for the very basis of democracy.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Professor Murray, one of the 
most extreme abortion bans in history, Texas' Senate Bill 8, 
took effect earlier this month after the Supreme Court refused 
to block it. And this December, the Supreme Court will hear 
oral arguments in a case examining Mississippi's 15-week 
abortion ban. This is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, which 
established the constitutional right to abortion. Professor 
Murray, how real is the possibility that Roe will fall in the 
coming months, and what will happen on the state level if it 
does? Professor Murray.
    Ms. Murray. Thank you for the question, Chairwoman Maloney. 
I think it is very clear, given the Supreme Court's actions in 
that September 1st order regarding S.B. 8, Texas' flagrantly 
unconstitutional six-week ban on abortion, that there is 
certainly a majority on the Court that is receptive to the 
prospect of overruling Roe. And certainly the question has been 
squarely presented by Mississippi in its briefs before the 
Court. Regardless of what the Court does--it could overrule Roe 
entirely, it could simply remove viability as a salient marker 
in the Court's jurisprudence--but the bottom line is the same. 
Reproductive rights across this country will be imperiled. If 
Roe is overruled, that will return this question to the states, 
and this country will be a patchwork of reproductive access 
where some parts of the country will have uneven, if not 
abysmal, access to reproductive healthcare while others will 
not, and that will have profound implications for poor women, 
women of color, LGBT women, women who live in rural areas.
    If the Court simply decides that viability is no longer a 
salient concept and allegedly saves Roe, what we will have is a 
desiccated and hollowed-out right to abortion in which the 
states will begin to pass ever-more restrictive laws and test 
whether a 12-week ban is permissible, a six-week ban is 
permissible. And, again, coming back to S.B. 8, the fact that 
we are now considering a six-week ban that is in effect on the 
ground in Texas means that the Overton Window about what is 
reasonable in terms of abortion restrictions has entirely 
shifted.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Professor Ross, you are one 
of the original founders of the Reproductive Justice Movement. 
If Roe falls, what will it mean for people seeking abortion 
care, particularly those for whom care has been historically 
pushed out of reach? Professor Ross.
    Ms. Ross. What it will mean is that people will have fewer 
choices than I had even when I was a teenager in Texas, that 
they will become desperate. My parents considered taking me to 
Texas and seeing if I could get an abortion there, but they 
deemed it wasn't safe. Instead they stuck me in a home, which 
was my decision, too, for unwed mothers in San Antonio near 
Trinity University because the plan was for me to give my son 
up for adoption, and I chose to keep him. And a lot of people 
think that because I kept my son born of rape and incest, that 
that is why abortion should be illegal or outlawed, but just 
because I love my child doesn't mean I wanted to be raped to 
have him. And so I think it will be hard on women in Texas.
    But I have to say as grassroots reproductive justice 
activists who believe that abortion is a human right, we will 
do whatever is necessary to save women's lives because we have 
got that lived experience, and we are going to have every means 
at our disposal to make sure women don't die because people 
don't care. But we care.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you all for being here today.
    The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud, is now recognized for 
five minutes. Mr. Cloud.
    Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Chair. The toughest discussions we 
have up here are the ones, for sure, where the rights of people 
we represent seem to be in conflict, and understandably, there 
is no shortage of deep emotion surrounding this debate, and 
especially for the women, who through no fault of their own, 
have found themselves victims of despicable and horrible acts. 
Our Declaration of Independence talks about the inalienable 
rights that we have as people, among them life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. And it is important that our founders 
recognized that these rights, they are not a grant from 
government, but they were a gift from God. They preceded our 
government, and, therefore, we don't have a right as a 
government to limit them. And so when we look at that, we 
realize that we can't have liberty, we can't have pursuit of 
happiness without the right to life.
    Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, and, of course, much has 
changed in the last nearly 50 years. We know a whole lot more 
than we did then. Nearly 50 years of scientific advancement 
have unveiled to us the amazing miracle of the development of a 
child. I asked my mom actually if she had an ultrasound picture 
of me, and she said no, and that is pretty common for anyone 
who was born when I was born, right around the time when Roe v. 
Wade was decided. Ultrasounds were not very common. There 
wasn't much we knew about what was going on.
    But much has happened since then, and we now know we have 
40 ultrasounds now where we can see facial features. We can see 
a child's smile. We can see them express emotion and react to 
external stimulus. We know a child's heartbeat can be detected 
as early as six weeks. In the early 70's when Roe v. Wade was 
being discussed, abortion advocates would often call it a blob 
of tissue or there was understanding that it was an appendage 
of a sort, but now we know so, so, so much more about it.
    According to the American College of Pediatricians and the 
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, they said 
this: ``We now know that the unborn child is a living human 
being, rapidly developing from the moment of conception and 
capable of feeling pain long before viability. Even in the pre-
viability period, the child's heart beats, the child can 
express himself or herself through smiling and other actions, 
and the child can respond to the environment outside the womb. 
In short, as basic embryology, textbooks now teach life begins 
at fertilization, a fact that surprises no one in the medical 
profession.'' And so, Dr. Skop, could you speak to the 
development of a child who has not been born yet? Is it fair to 
consider it still a blob of tissue, or what do we know now that 
we didn't know back in 1973?
    Dr. Skop. Well, we have beautiful ultrasound that tell us 
so much, and, in fact, some people want to call it fetal 
cardiac activity instead of a heartbeat, but the blood vessels 
exist from about the 16th day after conception. The fetal blood 
cells are actually already in place by about 21 days when the 
electrical activity that generates the heartbeat is in place, 
so the whole system is there and it is running that early. 
Within just a few weeks, we can see facial features. We can see 
arms, legs. By 9 to 10 weeks, the baby has fingerprints and 
fingernails. At 10 weeks, ultrasound tells us if that baby's 
going to be left-handed or right-handed. We can see a strong 
preference for sucking one thumb over the other, and this all 
happens in the first trimester. It is beautiful, and it is 
widely available to every American to look on YouTube and to 
see how much they look like us at such an early gestational 
age.
    Mr. Cloud. What about a pre-born baby's ability to feel 
pain? What do we know now that we didn't know back in 1973?
    Dr. Skop. For a long time, researchers in the field thought 
that it was necessary to have a completely formed cerebral 
cortex to feel pain. But we now know that the sensory receptors 
begin at seven weeks, that the spinal reflex arc, which allows 
withdrawal, begins at 10 weeks. A fetus at about 16 weeks who 
is undergoing amniocentesis and is actually accidentally stuck 
with a needle will do all of the things that we would do if we 
experienced pain. It will withdraw from the pain sensation. Its 
heart rate will go up. It will release stress hormones. By 20 
weeks, the thalamus, the lower part of the brain, is fully 
functional and connected to the extremities. And experiments in 
infants who don't have complete development of the cerebral 
cortex show that they show pain. We can see it on their faces.
    When fetal surgery is performed at as young as 18 weeks, 
the anesthesiologist always treats the fetus as a separate 
patient. He doesn't just give anesthesia to the mother. He 
gives specific anesthesia directed to the fetus to help that 
fetus not feel pain during that surgery. So certainly by the 
time of viability at around 22 weeks, we know that unborn human 
being feels pain, and the dismemberment abortion procedure that 
is used most commonly at that gestational age has got to result 
in excruciating pain to a member of our own species.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, 
she is now recognized for five minutes. Ms. Norton.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for this 
compelling hearing. Before I get to my main questions for the 
witnesses, I want to point out how uniquely vulnerable the 
reproductive rights of the women I represent in the District of 
Columbia are, at least until statehood, because Congress has 
control over the District's local affairs. Currently, Congress 
prohibits the District from spending its own local funds on 
abortion services for low-income women, even though 15 states 
use their own funds for this purpose. Future Republican 
Congresses could even create a Texas-style bounty law in D.C., 
and if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, Congress could ban 
abortion in the District of Columbia. It is more urgent than 
ever to make the District the 51st state.
    For nearly 50 years now, the Supreme Court has upheld the 
right to abortion care. Still, many states have sought to 
undermine this constitutional right, including by enacting 
trigger bans, and that is going to be the basis of my 
questions. These bans would immediately take effect in the 
event Roe falls. The Center for Reproductive Rights estimates 
that if Roe were to fall, 24 states would likely take action to 
ban abortion. That includes 30 states where so-called trigger 
bans have been enacted, meaning that abortion would be 
immediately outlawed if Roe is overturned by the Supreme Court. 
Professor Murray, could you explain how these trigger bans work 
and what that would mean for abortion access in these 11 
states?
    Ms. Murray. Thank you, Representative Norton. Trigger bans 
are laws that are already enacted in many of these states that 
basically specify that in the event that the Supreme Court 
overturns Roe v. Wade, the state will immediately re-
criminalize abortion within its borders, and the effect of 
that, of course, would be profound. It would turn vast swaths 
of the United States into abortion-free zones, and it would 
turn women living in those states into reproductive refugees 
having to go to other states in order to seek this kind of 
reproductive care. So to the extent we have been discussing in 
some quarters the refugee crisis at the southern border, we 
will be developing a different kind of refugee crisis within 
our country's own borders.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you. Professor Ross, you are one of the 
founding thought leaders of the Reproductive Justice Movement, 
which has broadened our understanding of how abortion 
restrictions disproportionately harm certain communities. How 
would banning abortion further entrench longstanding health 
inequities, particularly for communities of color?
    Ms. Ross. Thank you for the question. As we found out 
through COVID, people who already had inadequate healthcare, 
who already had limited life choices, found their lives made 
worse when they have to deal with an unexpected health crisis, 
and particularly when they have to deal with an unplanned 
pregnancy. So for black women, Latina women, indigenous women, 
disabled people, people who are already marginalized and 
underserved by the existing healthcare system, they will find 
their lives made worse. They will find that they have fewer 
options, and they will find that they have to go through even 
more extraordinary hardships to take care of the children they 
already have, to try to find a job or keep a job that they are 
already marginalized at.
    And I find that people will be extraordinarily desperate 
when they have to choose between paying their rent or buying 
food or getting an abortion or taking care of the children they 
already have. We as mothers, we do whatever is necessary to 
take care of our children, and we are trying to do that. And 
sometimes I remember with my own child, it meant going without 
food so my baby could eat. And so these are the things that 
people are asking us to dive deeper into, and it is callous. I 
don't even know why 50 years later I am fighting against human 
rights violators. I don't know why, but I continue to do so.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you very much. My time has expired.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair. Once again we find 
ourselves here in this committee dealing with issues that we 
have absolutely no jurisdiction to associate ourselves with 
here. And yet today, the Democrats are trying to convince us 
that abortion is a constitutional right, which, you know, look, 
arguably you have got about as much constitutional right to 
kill an unborn baby as you do your neighbor. It is the preamble 
of our Constitution that states clearly that the purpose of our 
Constitution is to secure the blessings of liberty for 
ourselves and our posterity, which, of course, are those that 
are not yet born. Certainly it is not the intent of the 
Constitution to kill the unborn and our posterity, but to 
secure the blessings of liberty for them. And yet here we are 
again.
    Madam Chair, we have time and again written letters and 
made requests for oversight of the executive branch. We have 
serious issues in this country that we have not been able to 
have hearings on, from the withdrawal in Afghanistan, to the 
southern border where we have COVID coming across the border, 
drugs, human trafficking, criminals, terrorists, and who knows 
what else, and still no hearings to address those issues. 
Inflation, on and on and on. And unless we deal with the 
disastrous decisions of this and the horrendous failures of 
this Administration, those things are going to continue in our 
country.
    But here we are dealing with abortion, and I would just say 
as a pastor, I have dealt with this for over 25 years. I am 
unapologetically pro-life. I have spoken, marched, voted, 
listened, prayed on this issue for decades.
    I appreciate my colleague, Kat Cammack, for her incredible 
testimony earlier this morning. And I have to say I was shocked 
last week as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted 
against the protection of a baby born alive from a botched 
abortion, and yet we are told the baby is somehow the mother's 
body. I wonder if that baby lying on the table there is 
considered the woman's body and that it is OK to kill that 
baby. You know, my colleagues voted in that direction last 
week. I have seen over and over and over for decades and have 
prayed with, ministered to, and helped women who are suffering 
emotionally and physically with the results of abortion, and I 
believe this needs to be a major topic, likewise, that is 
discussed here. Our Federal Government should not be in the 
business of expanding abortions, but in limiting it.
    And so, from that, Dr. Skop, I want to thank you for being 
here. Your testimony was incredible. From your professional and 
scientific opinion/perspective, is it correct to refer to the 
baby in the womb as the ``woman's body?''
    Dr. Skop. Thank you, Congressman. The baby has his own 
genetic makeup, half of which comes from his mother and half 
from his father. He is dependent on his mother, and yet 
dependency should not be a criteria of who has a right to live 
and who may be killed because, I mean, a newborn infant clearly 
is dependent. Human beings are very, very dependent for the 
early part of their life, unlike many animals. We need our 
mothers to care for us, to bring us to birth, and then to care 
for us even afterwards. So clearly he is, although part of the 
body or in the body, he is no more a part of the woman's body 
than a car in the garage is a consistent feature of the garage.
    Mr. Hice. OK. And listen, I mean, dependency, it would be 
like saying if a toddler fell in a swimming pool, because it is 
dependent upon someone else to save it, it is not of value, we 
can just let it drown. I mean, we could go down that path. 
Dependency is not the issue. It is a separate individual in the 
womb. Can you tell us how many women die each year from 
abortion procedure complications? Do you have any idea?
    Dr. Skop. I cannot tell you that because our country has 
very, very poor data on deaths related to abortion. There are 
many reasons for this. One is that there is really no clear 
Federal mandate to report deaths related to abortion. I am sure 
many members of this committee are aware that there is a 
maternal mortality crisis in our country across the board, and 
studies have documented that probably between 50 and 75 percent 
of even maternal deaths that occur related to childbirth, 
related to care in a hospital, many of those do not get 
reported on the death certificate. And there are various 
reasons for that that I probably won't go into. But the CDC 
primarily draws their data from death certificates, and they 
are ignoring the fact that it is very, very difficult to 
document on a death certificate a death, for example, if a 
woman has an abortion and commits suicide out of guilt six 
weeks later. That will almost never be documented.
    Many abortion providers do not maintain hospital 
privileges. It is very common--I have seen this in my own 
profession when I am taking care of women in the emergency 
room--for a woman not to return to the abortion provider if she 
has a complication, to come to me. Many times she is ashamed, 
and she won't even tell me that it was an abortion that led to 
the complication.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. If 
you can wrap up.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Dr. Skop. Anyway it is very, very poor data, so we do not 
know the answer to that question.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Connolly, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you 
for holding this hearing. Dr. ``MOY-adi.'' Have I got that name 
right?
    Dr. Moayedi. Moayedi, sir.
    Mr. Connolly. Moayedi. We just heard an exchange about 
complications and they are not reported, and the data is vague. 
What do you know about complications and deaths from licensed 
clinics that provide medically supervised care with respect to 
abortions?
    Dr. Moayedi. Thank you for that question. I would like to 
first remind all OB/GYNs that the American Board of OB/GYNs has 
recently warned that spreading medical misinformation can 
result in loss of Board certification. It is incorrect----
    Mr. Connolly. Can I just interrupt you there?
    Dr. Moayedi. Mm-hmm.
    Mr. Connolly. Did you just hear misinformation?
    Dr. Moayedi. I did just hear misinformation.
    Mr. Connolly. So for the record, Madam Chairwoman, we just 
heard misinformation according to Dr. Moayedi. Go ahead.
    Dr. Moayedi. It is incorrect that this data is not tracked 
appropriately, and, in fact, in our state of Texas, this data 
is tracked from a clinic level, and it is actually legally 
required that every single day we report to the state who has 
had abortions and if they have had any complications. And, in 
fact, now the state has passed a new law that I have to report 
complications that are not even related to abortion care that 
might happen 20 years later in a person's life.
    Mr. Connolly. So, couldn't one make the opposite argument 
Dr. Skop just made that, as a matter of fact, by closing 
clinics and making it difficult to get a legal abortion, which 
is legal in America, actually we are, Texas, for example, is 
endangering the lives of women seeking a safe clinical 
procedure in a clinic that is licensed?
    Dr. Moayedi. Exactly. We don't even need to make that 
argument. It is actually medical fact. We know----
    Mr. Connolly. It is a medical fact.
    Dr. Moayedi. It is a medical fact. We know that when people 
do not have access to abortion care, that maternal morbidity 
and mortality rates rise, and that is a global fact.
    Mr. Connolly. So would it be fair, in your opinion, to say, 
frankly, the new Texas law is endangering the lives of women?
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes, sir. That is exactly what I said in my 
testimony.
    Mr. Connolly. And what kinds of requirements has the state 
of Texas imposed or attempted to impose on abortion providers 
and the facilities where they work?
    Dr. Moayedi. We have numerous medically unnecessary laws, 
and that is not just my opinion. The National Academies of 
Sciences has shown in an unbiased, nonpartisan report that 
these laws are medically unnecessary and harm people. So in 
Texas, for example, first of all, a physician must provide 
abortion care even though we have good evidence that you don't 
need a physician to hand someone a pill or provide first-
trimester abortion care. In Texas, you must make an 
appointment, and that appointment, you have to come in and have 
a medically unnecessary ultrasound. That ultrasound has to be 
provided by the same physician that is going to perform the 
abortion. There is no reason that an ultrasound and the same 
physician increase safety at all. They have to wait 24 hours 
between the time that they get their ultrasound and the time 
that they get their abortion. The same physician has to do it. 
You have to be at least 18 years old. Otherwise, you need to 
get parental consent. You need to have an ID to be able to show 
it in the clinic.
    You need to be able to access a clinic, right? We don't 
have enough clinics in our state, and if you live anywhere 
along our southern border, that access has been gone for quite 
a while. The state restricts me practicing evidence-based care, 
so the state does not allow me to provide medication abortion 
past 10 weeks, even though we have good evidence from around 
the world that medication abortion is safe to provide after 10 
weeks. The state requires that I physically hand the patient 
the pill, even though all of us in this room, physician or not, 
can know that you don't need a physician to give you a pill.
    Mr. Connolly. Let me just interrupt you there. I mean, what 
you have just described, to me, sounds like an over-regulated 
regime in Texas making it very, very difficult for a woman to 
access legal medical care with respect to abortion. And I find 
it ironic that the same people who say wearing a mask 
compromises my personal autonomy have no compunction about 
imposing on women in this country and in the state of Texas 
some of the most restrictive legislation governing the most 
sacred autonomy possible: control over your own body.
    Briefly, Ms. Aziz, to make it all special, the Texas law 
allows vigilantes and gives them bounties. How is that 
affecting you in your work? And then I yield, Madam Chairwoman.
    Ms. Aziz. Thank you for your question. As I mentioned in my 
testimony, we have a lot of panicked callers that are very 
scared that they are going to be forced to remain pregnant 
against their wishes. You know, as you said, that is basic 
autonomy. It is very difficult to navigate because no one could 
have imagined that something like this would ever happen, you 
know, bounty hunting, vigilantism. Anybody, you know, just 
because they want the money can bring about a frivolous lawsuit 
against somebody, you know, against someone's family member or 
someone's friend who is trying to support them in having an 
abortion. It is completely ridiculous. And abortion is 
healthcare, and every person deserves equitable and fair access 
to an abortion.
    Mr. Connolly. We are back to the wild west in Texas. I 
yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar, is recognized for 
five minutes. Mr. Gosar.
    Mr. Gosar. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Dr. Skop, you were 
just accused of spreading misinformation. Would you like to 
address that comment, please?
    Dr. Skop. Thank you, Congressman, for the opportunity. I 
think that there is data available to support everything that I 
have said today, and I have provided references to the 
committee of what I have said. It is unfortunate that the 
politicization of this issue has affected the medical 
organizations as well. But as an OB/GYN, I went into this 
practice to care for two patients--a woman and her unborn 
child--and I continue because in my conscience, I cannot do 
otherwise than to advocate for the life and health of both of 
my patients. And that is the right thing to do.
    Mr. Gosar. Well, I agree with you, and we are seeing that 
same discussion here, you know, with what we claim to be a 
science within the COVID-19 discussion as well. So now, as a 
healthcare provider, we all know that patient autonomy is the 
foundation of all healthcare decisions. Informed consent 
respects that doctrine. I don't agree that abortion is 
healthcare, but assuming it is, all pregnant women receiving an 
abortion death pill should be told of the risk of the toxic 
brew they are swallowing, including the impact to future 
fertility. To your knowledge, are women being told that by 
taking this pill, they may impact their future fertility and 
not be able to have children in the future? And if not, can you 
discuss these ramifications?
    Dr. Skop. I do not know specifically what is being said in 
abortion clinics, but I do know that many states have mandated 
the discussion of complications. And, in fact, the FDA, under 
its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, mandated 
discussion of complications as well. What we do know and what I 
have seen frequently in the emergency room when I have cared 
for women having complications from medical abortions, is that 
it results in complications very frequently. Records linkage 
studies from Europe tell us that medical abortions have 
complications four times as frequently as surgical abortions. 
Very good studies and meta-analyses tell us that between 5 and 
8 percent of women who receive a medical abortion do not pass 
the tissue completely or hemorrhage and require surgical 
completion usually with a D&C. I do not know how many women 
understand that they have between a 1 in 12 and 1 in 20 chance 
of requiring a surgery in addition to the medical abortion 
pills that they receive.
    I think the number of medical abortions as a percentage of 
abortions is going up dramatically, particularly in response to 
COVID. I think there is a very good possibility if women 
understood the high risk of complications, that they might opt 
for surgical abortions instead. So the numbers of medical 
abortions are concerning. Additionally, the FDA, because of 
COVID, removed the in-person requirement for medical abortion 
dispensing, which means that a woman does not need to have an 
ultrasound to find out exactly how far along she is. I have 
seen many women who perhaps underestimate their gestational 
age. They are at much higher risk to fail if they are at a more 
advanced gestational age. They are no longer making sure that 
that is not a pregnancy outside of the uterus that could 
rupture because medical abortion pills do not affect a 
pregnancy in the tube, and women have died from that. They do 
not evaluate RH status, in which case a woman may in a future 
pregnancy, if she needed the RhoGAM injection and did not get 
it, she can form an immune response to her future children. And 
14 percent of those children, if they are untreated, will be 
stillborn. Half will suffer neonatal death or brain injury. 
There are some very significant complications that can occur 
with unsupervised medical abortion, and for some reason the FDA 
is choosing to look the other way on that.
    Mr. Gosar. So let me get this right. I have just limited 
time. There are preoperative screening complications if we 
don't screen, and there are complications post-abortion based 
upon those same screenings or additional factors.
    Dr. Skop. That is correct. There is a lot that women 
probably do not know.
    Mr. Gosar. Got you. Well, I have very limited time. I will 
yield back. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman from Illinois, 
Mr. Krishnamoorthi, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you so much, Chairwoman, and I 
appreciate you holding this very important hearing. Dr. Skop, I 
have a question for you. S.B. 8 prohibits abortions of a fetus 
after a ``detectable fetal heartbeat,'' correct?
    Dr. Skop. That is correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you supported and testified in 
support of S.B. 8 at a March Texas State Senate hearing, right?
    Dr. Skop. I was at a State Senate hearing. I was testifying 
particularly about the medical abortion limitations. I may have 
submitted a written testimony, but I don't recall that I 
testified verbally.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. But you support S.B. 8, correct?
    Dr. Skop. I support the ability of a state to legislate the 
procedure of abortion in accordance with the will of the 
people.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Well, let me ask you this. I read the 
whole text of S.B. 8, and in here it does not have an exception 
even in the case of rape, correct?
    Dr. Skop. That is probably correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And it doesn't have an exception even 
in the case of incest, right?
    Dr. Skop. That is correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Now, my wife and I have a daughter, Dr. 
Skop, and one of our greatest fears in life is that she would 
be sexually assaulted or raped. Now, I understand that you have 
a daughter, right?
    Dr. Skop. I do have a daughter.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. If, God forbid, your daughter were 
raped, do you believe that your daughter should be forced to 
carry the fetus to term?
    Dr. Skop. And I just want to say for the record that the 
stories that I have heard from women today of their abortions 
make me very sad. I feel for every woman that has been through 
that horrendous situation and had to make that horrendous 
decision. I am working for a world where women do not ever have 
to address that decision. But I would say that in the case of a 
rape, women generally know that they have been raped, and a 
woman can find out that she is pregnant----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I am just asking you a simple question, 
Dr. Skop. Even after a detectable fetal heartbeat under S.B. 8, 
were your daughter raped, would you believe that she should be 
forced to carry the baby to term as required by S.B. 8?
    Dr. Skop. S.B. 8 gives enough time for a woman who knows 
she has been raped to determine that she is pregnant.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. No, I am asking in the case after a 
detectable fetal heartbeat. After the detectable fetal 
heartbeat. I am just asking a very simple question. At that 
point, is it your testimony that you believe that your daughter 
should be forced to carry the baby to term even in the case of 
rape?
    Dr. Skop. If my daughter were pregnant as a result of rape, 
that would be extraordinarily sad, and I think that is evidence 
of the broken world that we are living in.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Ma'am, you don't want to answer the 
question. You are being evasive, and this is the hypocrisy 
which characterizes people like you having an opinion as to how 
you would treat your own daughter but forcing other daughters 
and sisters and women in the state of Texas to go through a 
wholly, entirely different experience. In 2019, the Texas 
Department of Safety reported more than 14,000 rapes in the 
state of Texas, and most experts believe, unfortunately, the 
actual number of rapes far surpasses the number of reported 
rapes. Now, ma'am, do you believe that after a fetal heartbeat 
is detected, there should be any exception for rape or incest?
    Dr. Skop. I think there is adequate time in this law for a 
woman who has been raped to discover that she is pregnant, and 
if she wants to terminate the pregnancy, I think that she has 
time to do it.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. You are not answering the question, 
ma'am. After the detectable fetal heartbeat has been supposedly 
ascertained under the statute. It appears that you don't 
believe that there should be an exception for rape or incest, 
and that goes directly contrary to what Donald Trump said. He 
said, ``I am strongly pro-life with three exceptions: rape, 
incest, and protecting the life of the mother, the same 
position taken by Ronald Reagan.''
    Now, let me talk about Governor Abbott. When he was asked 
about forcing women to carry their fetuses to term in the case 
of rape, he said, ``Texas will work tirelessly to make sure 
that we eliminate all rapists.'' Now, ma'am, you don't believe 
that S.B. 8 is going to result in the elimination of rape in 
Texas, do you?
    Dr. Skop. No, of course not.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you don't believe that incest will 
be eliminated in Texas either.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, his time has expired.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. She can----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. She can answer.
    Dr. Skop. The heartbeat indicates an independent human 
life, and as a pro-life physician who advocates for the fetus 
as well as the mother, that human life should be allowed to 
continue.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Unresponsive. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlewoman North Carolina, Mrs. Foxx, you are 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I want to thank 
you for the way you have handled yourself in this hearing. But 
I want to thank Dr. Skop for being willing to put up with some 
very disrespectful questioning and a very, very disrespectful 
attitude toward you. We really appreciate that. Thank you very 
much for doing that. Dr. Skop, have you seen many examples of 
premature babies born around 22 to 24 weeks who go on to lead 
healthy lives after receiving treatment, and have you seen the 
age of these patients decrease as science has advanced?
    Dr. Skop. Thank you, Congresswoman. I have. I have been 
practicing for 25 years. Around the time that I started, I 
think that we considered viability the age at which you could 
likely resuscitate a baby, that he would have a, you know, a 
good chance at survival at around 25, 26 weeks. Currently, we 
are seeing babies saved in our hospital at 22 weeks, 
extraordinarily fragile, extraordinarily sad, heartbreaking for 
the mothers. Many times I have seen this in association with a 
shortened cervix, which good studies show us is associated with 
abortion, particularly multiple abortions. So sadly, women 
don't know that their choice they make today may cause them to 
have an extremely premature baby who clings to life later.
    Ms. Foxx. Do you believe that the age of viability will get 
younger as we continue to make scientific and medical progress?
    Dr. Skop. I think it may get a little younger. I think that 
there is going to be a physical constraint at the point at 
which the alveoli, where the oxygen comes in, and the blood 
vessels that flow through the lungs, can actually pass oxygen. 
So there may be a hard limit, but it is amazing that we are 
saving so many babies at just a little over halfway through a 
pregnancy.
    Ms. Foxx. Yes. Dr. Skop, in an amicus brief submitted to 
the Supreme Court as it considers the Dobbs v. Jackson case, 
375 women shared in sworn affidavits how they were injured by 
second and third tri-semester, late-term abortions. Madam 
Chair, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the record the 
amicus and appendix recording the experiences of these women.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you. Dr. Skop, have you encountered women 
in your work who have had similar experiences?
    Dr. Skop. I think that a late abortion is exceedingly 
emotionally traumatic for a woman. She has felt the baby 
moving. Regardless of her circumstances, that has got to be the 
hardest decision to make. They are very dangerous. I will tell 
you something else that I am concerned about. I mentioned 
coercion. If we have abortion without limits for any reason in 
this country until birth, a woman who is being coerced toward 
an abortion has nine months to fight for the life of her baby. 
I think many women who have late abortions are women who just 
got tired of saying no, no, no, I want to keep my baby, which 
is terribly tragic.
    One thing that I have seen in Texas from the pregnancy 
centers that I work with is that women come in for ultrasounds, 
and when they see the heartbeat, they are very happy because 
they now know that their boyfriend or their mother cannot 
coerce them into an abortion because it is illegal. The earlier 
we set limits, the more we are protecting women from that 
coercion of losing the baby that they want to carry.
    Ms. Foxx. Right. And we see this in the crisis pregnancy 
centers all over the country. Dr. Skop, I am going to give you 
just a few more seconds. I know you have corrected the record 
at least once since I have been listening. There are many 
things that have been said today that have not been true, and I 
wanted to see if you would like to correct any more falsehoods 
that have been said.
    Dr. Skop. I must speak to the statement that was made that 
pro-life people are racist because we do not want the Hyde 
Amendment to be overturned and for the government to pay for 
abortions of children of color. The flip side that we should be 
considering is that black women have more than three times the 
abortions of white women. People may not recognize it, but 
there has got to be a eugenic component here. In the civil 
rights era of the 1960's, there were approximately 18 million 
black people in America. Since Roe, approximately 18 million 
black babies have been aborted. It is not racist to want to 
save those children.
    Ms. Foxx. That is a very eloquent statement. And we all 
know that Planned Parenthood was begun in order to kill black 
babies and other children who were unborn that they felt were 
unfit for this world, and it is important people understand the 
history of Planned Parenthood.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. 
Raskin, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Women in the United 
States have had a constitutional right to an abortion since 
1973, and that is not an argument. That is an old-fashioned 
thing called a fact. Since the middle of the 20th century, 
American women have been free to make their own decisions with 
respect to abortion, and this is as it should be, for every 
woman's situation is unique, as we have heard from women 
witnesses on both sides of the aisle today. Some women are 32 
and have become pregnant by choice and are hoping to have a 
baby. Others are 19 and become pregnant by rape, abuse, or 
incest, and would never consent to bear their rapist's or 
abuser's child. Some have the private resources and personal 
health necessary to raise many children. Others are 
impoverished, ill, depressed, in emotional or mental crisis, 
and could not seriously contemplate it.
    The point is every woman's situation is completely 
different and deeply personal. So the real question before us 
in America today is, who is going to decide for the women of 
America? Is it the women of America, or is it state 
legislators, 69 percent of whom are men? That is the question. 
Who is going to make these most private and intimate decisions? 
I know that every member of the committee on the other side 
opposes Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to privacy, 
but I wonder if any of them are willing to actually defend the 
details of the new Texas law.
    It not only makes it unlawful for a woman to have an 
abortion after six weeks when most women don't even know they 
are pregnant. It deputizes every person in the United States 
from all 50 states, including rapists, and sexual harassers, 
and insurrectionists, and murderers, everyone including 
snooping and spiteful neighbors, feuding relatives, to go out 
and sue the doctors, the nurses, the medical personnel, and 
family members who dare to help their daughter, or niece, or 
sister, or mother through a health crisis, and they can sue 
them for $10,000 under Texas state law today. That is America 
in the 21st century today with the constitutional right to 
privacy under attack.
    This is our future and our present in the nightmare 
Orwellian world that the GOP wants to deliver to us, but our 
friends don't want to speak about the specifics. So I want to 
ask specifically every single witness here, do you think the 
law should be changed in America so women and girls who are 
raped can be forced to bear their rapist's child as under the 
Texas law? Do you think the law should be changed so women and 
girls who are raped can be forced by the state to bear their 
rapist's child as under the Texas law? And I will begin with 
Ms. Steinem if she is still out there.
    [No response.]
    Mr. Raskin. OK. Then, Ms. Aziz, I come to you. Just ``yes'' 
or ``no,'' if you can. Should the law be changed so that women 
and girls who are raped can be forced to bear their rapist's 
child?
    Ms. Aziz. As a survivor, I can't fathom the thought of 
having to carry my rapist's child, and no one should have to do 
that.
    Mr. Raskin. So your answer is, no, it should not be 
changed. OK. Dr. Moayedi.
    Dr. Moayedi. No.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much. Dr. Skop.
    Dr. Skop. No, I don't want to see the law changed. I want 
to see people's hearts and minds changed about this unborn 
human.
    Mr. Raskin. OK. So I take it your position then is Roe v. 
Wade has it right, the woman has a constitutional right to 
privacy, but we should engage in the old-fashioned American 
arts of persuasion of trying to convince people to our point of 
view about an intensely private decision like this.
    Dr. Skop. Thank you. That is why I am here today.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much. Professor Murray, what 
about you?
    Ms. Murray. No.
    Mr. Raskin. OK. And, Ms. Ross, what about you? I don't know 
if she is still there.
    Ms. Ross. The answer is obvious. No, because my son had a 
complicated life getting to know his pedophile father and the 
fact that I had to deal with this man re-raping me emotionally 
just to raise my child. That is an obvious no.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, Ms. Ross, I want to thank you especially 
for your testimony. I want to thank all the witnesses, but you 
have really made vivid for the United States what we are 
talking about here, which is every woman's situation is 
different. Every family's situation is different. And the 
Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey 
made this a personal decision, and the doctrine has changed 
from one of the trimester framework. By the way, everyone 
saying you can have an abortion up to nine months, that is 
deranged. That has got nothing to do with the law in the United 
States under Roe v. Wade or Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which 
draws the line at fetal viability.
    But I just want to say every witness here on both sides now 
seems to agree that the Texas law is deeply flawed, if not 
completely unconstitutional, in impinging on the woman's right 
to choose and compelling her to go ahead and bear her rapist's, 
or her abuser's, or her assailant's child against her will. And 
that is an outrage and that is a scandal. That is totalitarian. 
Let's go back to the constitutional right to privacy, and let's 
have the discussion. People can try to engage with each other 
and move each other, and I thank Dr. Skop for that point, but 
let's not trample on the constitutional rights of the people. I 
yield back to you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. 
Higgins, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair. From my heart, I feel 
the pain of my fellow Americans on both sides of the aisle, 
this issue. We will all answer for our sins. All of us fall 
short of the glory of God. I am no exception. I have lived at 
times in rebellion against God, and for every sinful act, I 
will kneel before our Lord and Savior. Over the course of my 60 
years, I have failed and fallen in ways that bring shame upon 
my heart and soul. I have been callous and uncaring. I have 
lacked compassion and I have broken promises. I have been at 
times a bad son, an unworthy brother, a poor father, and a 
failed husband. I have lived and, thus, I have sinned.
    America is an anointed Nation, and as such, our republic 
will move forward according to God's will, and our Nation will 
evolve in our Savior's own time. I stand in judgment of no man. 
Judgment is of the Lord. As a child of God now in my life, 
obedient to His path, I will fight to protect the innocent with 
every fiber of my being and every power of my spirit. 
Ultimately, God's will will imbue itself into American society 
deep from our heart, as has been mentioned here today. 
America's laws ultimately will reflect God's love for his 
unborn children. Until that time, some of us will never rest in 
our battle to protect the most vulnerable amongst us: the 
precious and innocent children of the womb.
    This has been a meaningful and insightful hearing. I am 
moved by the testimony of our witnesses today, and I have faith 
and confidence in the future of our Nation. Divided though we 
be on this issue, I believe ultimately, my brothers and 
sisters, that we are in God's hands and we will move forward 
according to His will. Madam Chair, I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The 
gentleman from California, Mr. Rho Khanna, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    [No response.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman needs to unmute.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I just 
want to take 30 seconds to correct the record. Representative 
Foxx suggested, this absurd suggestion that Planned Parenthood 
was somehow conceived to encourage abortions in the African-
American community. I suggest reading an 8th-grade history book 
as a starter. First of all, abortion wasn't even legal when 
Planned Parenthood was founded in 1919. Originally, it was 
founded to encourage birth control by Margaret Sanger, and 
W.E.B. Dubois, one of the great civil rights leaders, was an 
adviser to Sanger. So, you know, it is fine to have ideological 
differences, but it is really sad that people are saying things 
that are a misreading of American history. It is, frankly, 
pretty unpatriotic that you don't take the time to read 
American history and are creating false impressions. And this 
is why I think, you know, I am such a believer in civic 
education, historic education, and it is sad to me my 
colleagues wouldn't just open up an 8th-grade history book 
first to get some basic facts.
    With that, let me turn to Dr. Skop. Dr. Skop, do you 
believe that homosexual behavior should be criminalized?
    Voice. Where did that come from?
    Dr. Skop. No, of course not.
    Mr. Khanna. OK. And do you believe that same-sex marriage 
is OK, I mean, legal, or are you against same-sex marriage?
    Dr. Skop. You know, at this point, I think our country has 
decided that decision, and I really have no opinion to weigh 
in.
    Mr. Khanna. You wouldn't be opposed to it, though. It 
wouldn't be something you strongly oppose.
    Dr. Skop. Well, I think that what you are talking about is 
activity between----
    Mr. Khanna. That is just a simple ``yes'' or ``no,'' Dr. 
Skop. I am not trying to trick you. I mean, are you neutral 
toward it, against it, for it?
    Dr. Skop. To same----
    Mr. Khanna. Legally. Do you think people should have the 
legal right to same-sex marriage?
    Dr. Skop. Well, I think they do, so I----
    Mr. Khanna. And you are fine with that. You think that is 
fine.
    Dr. Skop. That is a decision our country has made and----
    Mr. Khanna. OK. Well, I guess my question is, do you 
support the Texas Right to Life Group?
    Dr. Skop. I am not sure. Are you asking me if I financially 
support or if I just support----
    Mr. Khanna. Well, just are you sympathetic to what they----
    Dr. Skop. Well, there are different----
    Mr. Khanna. It is a ``yes'' or ``no,'' Dr. Skop. Are you 
sympathetic? I mean, I assume that----
    Dr. Skop. Well, there are differences of opinions within 
the pro-life community just as I am sure there are within the 
pro-choice community. I think they did a heroic thing, and, 
again, I am proud that Texas is the first state that has been 
able to----
    Mr. Khanna. OK. So here is my question to you.
    Dr. Skop [continuing]. Enforce a restriction.
    Mr. Khanna. And I hope you will condemn this. So Texas 
former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, who has filed 
an amicus brief on behalf of this group, Texas Right to Life, 
in the Dobbs case, the group that you described as heroic. The 
brief argues that ``homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage 
are 'Court-invented rights.' These rights, like the right to 
abortion through Roe, are judicial concoctions, and there is no 
source of law that can be invoked to salvage their existence.'' 
The amicus brief is asking the Court to overturn Lawrence v. 
Texas and Obergefell, meaning, basically, they want to 
criminalize homosexual behavior again, and they want to take 
away same-sex marriage. Can you today unequivocally denounce 
that amicus brief and say how embarrassed you are, given your 
beliefs, that they would put something like that to the Supreme 
Court?
    Dr. Skop. I really have no opinion on that statement. I 
don't think it relates to the issue of abortion.
    Mr. Khanna. Well, of course it does. They are putting an 
amicus brief in the name of Texas Right to Life, and part of 
their argument for overturning Roe v. Wade is linked to issues 
of LGBTQI equality. Does that concern you that that groups, in 
the name of defending S.B. 8, are trying to overturn Obergefell 
and Lawrence?
    Dr. Skop. I have no opinion on that. I wonder, could I 
clarify what Congresswoman Foxx said that you mentioned about 
Margaret Sanger?
    Mr. Khanna. You can do that on someone else's time.
    Dr. Skop. OK.
    Mr. Khanna. But what I really want to know, if you don't 
find any embarrassment in the fact that you have briefs written 
in part of the pro-life movement that are basically advocating 
for the criminalization of homosexuality, are you even aware 
that these briefs are being written seeking that in the Court, 
in the case law?
    Dr. Skop. I don't see how that pertains. I would imagine 
there are briefs written in support of Roe that may contain 
facts that you might find potentially controversial, so I----
    Mr. Khanna. Well, these are facts. This is central to the--
--
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, his time has expired. Perhaps 
Representative Khanna----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Comer--could suggest having a hearing on homosexuality 
after your hearings on white supremacy and----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Does the gentleman yield back? His time 
has expired.
    Mr. Comer [continuing]. Whatever else you are going to do--
--
    Mr. Raskin. Order. Order.
    Mr. Comer [continuing]. That has nothing to do with 
oversight.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair? Madam Chair? I have a 
point of parliamentary inquiry.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady is recognized.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, 
with respect to the gentleman from Louisiana, my understanding 
of the way we run this committee is that it is the chair that 
decides when an individual's time has expired, and the 
gentleman should have his have his mic muted and is out of 
order when chiming in to tell you when someone's time has 
expired.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Yes, you are right.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Isn't that correct?
    Chairwoman Maloney. You are correct.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So I would ask the gentleman----
    Mr. Higgins. The gentleman from Louisiana didn't speak.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Excuse me. Excuse me. The floor is 
mine at the moment. Forgive me if I made reference to the wrong 
person, but whoever has been calling out is out of order, Madam 
Chair, and it is you that controls the time and tells members 
when their time has expired.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, we are all trying to stick to the 
five-minute rule.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. I would just ask that members 
refrain, or you make sure members refrain from telling you when 
that is, and that we follow procedure so that you can manage 
the time. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentlewoman from South 
Carolina, Ms. Mace, is now recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I just want 
to thank everyone who testified today, our witnesses with your 
medical background. I know many of us are very passionate about 
many different issues, but there were many women today that 
testified before us about their own struggles with rape, their 
own struggles with sexual assault, and the lifelong pain and 
trauma that it brings to us both physically, emotionally, and 
mentally, but the stories this morning that we heard are 
remarkable and they are painful. I told my rape story 2 or 3 
years ago as a state lawmaker when South Carolina was doing its 
own fetal heartbeat bill, and today, I believe we are still one 
of the only states in the country that has a fetal heartbeat 
bill, with exceptions for women who have been raped and for 
victims of incest because I told that story. And so I am pro-
life and regardless of the circumstances.
    When you are raped, it is traumatic, and we have a right to 
make that decision for ourselves, but at some point, these 
cells become a human and become a child inside a woman's womb. 
And so the other thing that I think about this morning, it 
pains me to hear these stories because too often too many women 
have those same stories, and it is offensive as I sit here as a 
woman, as a victim of rape, and hear some of my colleagues 
question one of our physicians here today about what she would 
do if her daughter was raped. I can't even tell you the 
unimaginable anger and pain that I have as a woman when someone 
wants to make that kind of hypothetical example. This isn't 
something to toy with. We should not be having this hearing for 
political PR purposes for the next, you know, fundraising 
scheme on social media. This is a serious issue, and it affects 
women who are Republican and Democrat alike.
    This is not a joke, and there are kids out there that are 
victims of incest. There are women out there who are dealing 
with this for a lifetime. And I don't hear any of my 
colleagues--I don't care if you are a Republican or Democrat--
sit there and have a hypothetical question to women who are 
here today, asking them what you would do if your child was 
raped. I find it offensive and disgusting.
    The second thing I want to say this morning is that gay 
marriage has nothing to do with abortion or their right to life 
in this country, and it has already been decided by the Supreme 
Court. We are all adults in the room, and I hope that all of us 
support the rights. If you want to be happily or be miserably 
married like anybody else, you have the right to do that.
    Third and finally, I sit here today, and Lieutenant Colonel 
Scheller is sitting in a brig. He is the only person that has 
been put away without a charge or a sentence or a conviction on 
Afghanistan for exercising a right to speak out and potentially 
be a whistleblower and expressing his frustrations as a 
soldier. I saw yesterday and Tuesday this week in the Senate 
and House hearings the blame game going on in Afghanistan. We 
have billions of dollars that we just left of equipment to the 
Taliban who are selling it to Iran and God knows who else. We 
have a Cabinet that is saying one thing and a President that is 
saying another. I then, as I am sitting here, seeing an email 
come across my desk that says reportedly the Department of 
Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas is wondering if we can, 
you know, accommodate between 350-and 400,000 illegal 
immigrants at the border, if we can account for those illegal 
apprehensions, if we get away or do away with Title 42. 
Meanwhile, our Border Patrol agents are being threatened to be 
fired if they don't get a vaccination.
    And so I ask this question, what the hell is going on here 
today? We don't have oversight over state abortion rights. This 
is not the purpose of this committee, and I yield back. Thank 
you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. The 
gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. You 
know, I need to correct and address an assertion that was made 
not too long ago, this idea, this myth that, first of all, that 
this law, S.B. 8, provides ample time for a victim of abuse to 
seek abortion care because, once again, we are in a room of 
legislators who are attempting to legislate reproductive 
systems that they know nothing about. Six weeks pregnant, and 
it is shameful that this education even needs to happen because 
this conversation shouldn't even be held in a legislative body. 
Six weeks pregnant is two weeks late for one's period. When you 
are raped, you don't always know what happened to you, and I 
speak about this as a survivor. You are in so much shock.
    And by the way people, who commit abuse, and victims and 
survivors of sexual assault are overwhelmingly assaulted by 
someone they know. And this myth that it is some person lurking 
on a street or in a parking lot waiting to sexually assault 
you, that myth only benefits the abusers in power that want you 
to think that that is how it happens. It is your friend. It is 
a boyfriend. It is a boss. It is a legislator. You are in so 
much shock at what happened to you, sometimes it takes years to 
realize what actually went on.
    So this idea that victims know in the two weeks that they 
might be late for their period? I am a buck-15. I am 115 
pounds. You look at me funny, I am two weeks late for my 
period, and you are supposed to expect me to know that I am 
pregnant? Or the stress of a sexual assault, that makes you two 
weeks late for your period, whether you are pregnant or not. 
Unbelievable. Unbelievable that the Republican side will call a 
witness, so irresponsible and hurtful to survivors across this 
country, honestly. You deserve your constituents an apology.
    Now, Professor Ross, yes or no. Is it a common tactic for 
an abuser to sabotage their partner's birth control? Are you 
on?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Turn on your mic.
    Ms. Ross. Yes. They keep silencing my mic. I am not. Yes, I 
hear it all the time. I have heard it from women, particularly 
when they are in the control or power of their abuser.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Now----
    Ms. Ross. They do it all the time, and we have seen people 
who are forced to continue pregnancies, and we have seen people 
who are forced and coerced into having an abortion. And that is 
why it has to be the woman's choice and not people with power 
over her.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Professor. And so as you 
said, it is a very common tactic for an abuser to sabotage a 
partner's birth control, a victim's birth control. Now, in your 
advocacy experience, would you say that abusers often do this 
to intentionally try to get their partners pregnant without 
sometimes their knowledge?
    Ms. Ross. Yes, that has happened. Now, in my case, I don't 
think my abuser, my rapist, married cousin, wanted me to be 
pregnant because he ran as soon as he found out that my father 
knew. But I do hear women's stories all the time----
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And----
    Ms. Ross [continuing]. And there are so many circumstances. 
You can't come up with one story that fits all those different 
circumstances.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you, Professor. And we, you know, 
can see, that abusers will sabotage their partners' birth 
control in an effort to exert power and control over them. Dr. 
Moayedi, when we see that the tactics of abusers on a personal 
level, the attempt to control and sabotage a victim's 
reproductive care and control over themselves, then becomes 
mass adopted by overwhelmingly, frankly, cisgender male state 
legislatures, do you see a connection between these abuse 
dynamics in person and how they inform a culture in which they 
could be affirmed, or in which these laws could potentially 
help or assist abusers in this dynamic?
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes. So unfortunately, our country is actually 
founded on reproductive control and coercion of enslaved 
Africans and of indigenous people. So this is actually a 
historical tactic in our country and a method of upholding 
white supremacy. So that has not changed and continues today.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you very much, Doctor. My time has 
expired. I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman from Georgia, 
Mr. Clyde, is recognized for five minutes. Mr. Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, it 
is quite evident that this hearing is strategically placed to 
distract from the massive $4.3 trillion spending bill that the 
Democrats want to hide from the American people, a bill that 
will further bankrupt our country, saddle us with trillions 
more in debt, and create Federal programs that fundamentally 
change America into a big-government, socialist Nation. That is 
because the Democrats passed their bill, H.R. 3755, that 
pertains to today's topic last week. We hold hearings to gather 
expert input on bills before they pass, not after they are 
passed unless it is for messaging purposes only, and that is 
exactly what we are doing.
    But we are here attending a hearing called ``Examining the 
Urgent Need to Expand Abortion Rights and Access.'' Let's be 
clear. Abortion is neither healthcare nor is it a 
constitutional right. Life is the constitutional right. An 
abortion procedure ends a life. It ends the heartbeat of a 
precious child in the womb, and such violence is never 
acceptable or protected under our Constitution. Dr. Skop, if 
you want an opportunity to respond to that personal attack, I 
will give you one for a moment.
    Dr. Skop. Thank you for that opportunity, but I am not 
offended. There is so much pain on both sides of this issue, 
and if we all come away with one point from this hearing, it is 
that we are not going to legislate, we are not going to find a 
solution that is going to make everybody happy. Our country 
needs to improve its behavior. We need to stop allowing rapists 
to run amok. We need to provide effective contraception, which, 
by the way, there is long-acting reversible contraception that 
is extraordinarily effective and has been proven, and I am sure 
you would agree with me, in large-scale studies to prevent 
abortion by keeping women from getting pregnant.
    We need to prioritize relationships. Most women who seek 
abortion, if they tell the father of the baby about their 
pregnancy--I have seen this time and time again--what they are 
secretly hoping for is that he will say is, ``You know what? I 
love you. I will marry you. The circumstances may not be good, 
we may not have much money, but we are going to make it work.'' 
That is what women want, and what they are getting instead is, 
here is $600 and Planned Parenthood is down the street. All of 
this has to change.
    Mr. Clyde. Wow. Wow. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for being 
here today. You know, you mentioned in your testimony that you 
have delivered over 5,000 babies in the past 29 years. Surely 
you have seen technology come a long way since your beginning 
days as an OB/GYN. Could you describe briefly the impact this 
technology has had on improving the viability of unborn 
children for those born prematurely?
    Dr. Skop. It is amazing. I believe one of the witnesses 
earlier today was discussing her child that she could hold in 
her hand, but they are perfect. They are perfectly formed. They 
feel pain. Many times, many times at 22 weeks, half of these 
babies can survive, and many of them have an intact survival, 
but that is not to say that it is not a lot of pain involved in 
that. I mean, how horrible to have a child and you don't know 
if they are going to live or die, or maybe they have a life 
full of struggle. So it is amazing that we can do what we can 
do, but at the same time, maybe we can start looking into some 
of the things that cause these young babies to be born. And in 
many cases, it is cervical damage because abortion is so 
common.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. In previous questions, you expounded 
on the many risks associated with abortions, particularly with 
at-home chemical abortions. With the recent push to eliminate 
risk evaluation and mitigation strategy protocols, do you 
believe women in rural areas are at a higher risk for serious 
complications?
    Dr. Skop. Well, certainly. The complications don't occur 
when the woman is given the pill in the clinic. The reason for 
the in-person requirements is to make sure that they desire the 
abortion, that they have been counseled appropriately, that 
they are at low risk to have a complication from the abortion. 
So if think they are eight weeks and they are really 12 weeks, 
there is a far higher failure rate. That is the reason for the 
in-person requirements. But the tail end of the abortion is 
that many women bleed for a week or two, pass a lot of clots, 
have a lot of pain. Eight percent bleed for more than a month. 
The tail end is that the complications occur long after she has 
left the abortion facility, which may be five hours from her 
home. And when she is in a rural area and does not have access 
to emergency care conveniently, those are the women that are 
going to suffer.
    If that woman really understood, I think most of them would 
opt for a surgical abortion in the clinic so that it is done, 
and they don't have to worry that they are going to be one of 
the 5 to 8 percent that are going to require a surgery often in 
emergent conditions, overrunning the ER in the time that we are 
concerned about the COVID pandemic. Using the pandemic as an 
excuse to tell women to go self-manage their abortions remote 
from the clinic in rural areas, it just shows me that the 
women----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman's time has expired. You 
may tie it up. Thank you.
    Dr. Skop. Anyway, I just don't think it is good care for 
women. It is not showing that we value those women to put them 
in that dangerous situation.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Clyde. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. 
Tlaib, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much, Chairwoman Maloney, for your 
courageous stance and also using the House Oversight Committee 
to take a deeper dive into the impact of what happened in 
Texas, there, as well as across the country.
    You know, I grew up in the most beautiful, blackest city in 
the country where 85 percent of the city of Detroit is black, 
and it is beautiful, and black mothers are the ones who told my 
mother to raise her voice when she had that heavy immigrant 
accent at parent meetings. And, you know, I am sitting here 
listening to people pretending, disingenuously and dishonestly, 
that they actually care about the lives of my black neighbors. 
I always get emotional about this because I cannot believe that 
my colleagues, who didn't vote for the George Floyd Justice for 
Policing Act, are talking about the fact that Planned 
Parenthood, which I believe is literally one of the only 
healthcare places and institutions in cities like mine, the 
fact that we have some of the worst infant mortality rates in 
the country among black children. We can't even get them to one 
year old.
    It is like, why aren't we spending the same energy, Doctor, 
in saving those lives, getting them to one year? How come when 
I was in the Michigan legislature they spent so much time on 
this, that they never wanted to talk about that single mother 
that we needed to make sure that she had the wraparound 
services, that she could actually provide for her family 
because she made a choice? But we abandon those mothers, every 
corner. We vilify and dehumanize. I have watched them force 
mothers to do drug testing before they could even get any 
assistance. When? When are we going to actually call this out 
for what it is? No, this is about controlling women in our 
country, period. Stop pretending that it is anything but.
    You know, what is so distressful about all of this is the 
fact that it is not just Texas, Chairwoman. You know this. This 
is literally opening the floodgates to the possibility that we 
are actually going to see our country punish and criminalize 
abortion, criminalize women making a very difficult decision. I 
want to know, you know, Dr. Skop, like, honestly, what are you 
doing about infant mortality rate among black children? Have 
you testified in a committee about it?
    Dr. Skop. Thank you for your question. I am very interested 
in the topic. I have applied to be a member of the Texas 
Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Committee three times. I have 
not been accepted. I suspect it may be because of my stance on 
life.
    Ms. Tlaib. Mm-hmm.
    Dr. Skop. But I am terribly concerned by the lack of 
support that so many of those women have.
    Ms. Tlaib. Yes. Well, the same people that voted for the 
bill that you are championing today are people that would 
actually leave them completely homeless and with no safeguards 
at all. I want you to believe me when say that to you because 
black lives matter should be very much at the forefront in 
every policy that we ever do in this country. It can't just be 
you carrying a sign or being on a commission. It is actually 
standing up and saying what we see, because I want to tell you 
something. You know, over 40 percent of the deaths of COVID in 
my state are my black neighbors, even though they make up less 
than 14 percent of the total population of Michigan, because of 
environmental racism, because they don't have access to 
healthcare. And you are all punishing Planned Parenthood, which 
is literally sometimes the only option that they have because 
people are investing and saying this is how we can get access 
to healthcare. And I am really just incredibly frustrated of 
the gaslighting, the misleading, and trying to say you are 
speaking on behalf of my black neighbors. You are not. You are 
not.
    And so I am going to leave with Ms. Ross. I saw your face 
and the pain in your face, and I just have to tell you, you 
know, as you were listening to them, I could see you had a lot 
to say. And I am going to leave you with the last minute to 
tell me how you felt when you heard them talk about, oh, this 
is killing black folks. Tell them what is really killing black 
folks in this country. Go ahead and tell them the truth.
    Ms. Ross. Well, I am tired of white saviors saying that 
black women aren't smart enough to make our own decisions about 
our lives. That is what I am tired of. That is the ultimate in 
racism to accuse us of being less smart, less human, and less 
caring about our children than you do when your actions speak 
louder than your mealy words because you vote against children 
having lunches, getting good schools, getting rid of guns so 
that they can survive. You vote against everything about our 
children once they are here, and yet you want to say that you 
are a better savior of black children than we are? Get over 
yourself. This white saviorism does not convince us that you 
have our interest at heart.
    Ms. Tlaib. I hope you heard her because, you know, a mentor 
of mine told me when I got here, some people are never going to 
hear or see you the same way I do, Rashida. But I saw you, Ms. 
Ross, and you felt what she is saying because it is the truth. 
You want to save lives? Start investing in tearing down 
structural racism in our country.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, point of order. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    Mr. Comer. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Texas, the gentleman 
from Kansas, Mr. LaTurner----
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney.--is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Comer. Point of order. Point of order from the ranking 
member. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. The gentleman is recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair----
    Chairwoman Maloney. What is your point of order?
    Mr. Comer. I have never seen a hearing where a witness has 
been badgered and treated the way that our witness has been 
treated today, and I would like to encourage your members to 
treat this witness with respect. I can't believe I am having to 
say this in Congress. We are very frustrated at 99 percent of 
your witnesses over this Congress, but we treat them with 
respect. So all I ask is that the Democrats treat our witness 
with respect. She is answering the questions. She is doing a 
tremendous job handling herself well, and I don't think she 
deserves to be treated the way that she has been treated by 
your side. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, I know that members have very 
strong feelings about this issue, but I would encourage members 
to treat everyone in this hearing, members and witnesses, with 
respect. And with that, can we continue with our hearing?
    I now call upon Mr. LaTurner from Kansas. You are now 
recognized, Mr. LaTurner.
    Mr. LaTurner. Madam Chairwoman. This committee has many 
opportunities for much-needed and long-overdue oversight, 
including the growing security crisis on our southern border, 
the deadly disaster that was our humiliating troop withdrawal 
from Afghanistan, the true origin of COVID, or the growing 
economic threat of runaway inflation for every American family. 
However, we are taking time today to instead focus on the 
legislation the House passed last Friday, the abortion on 
demand until birth act.
    This past January marked the 40th anniversary of the 
Supreme Court's infamous Roe ruling, which struck down any laws 
protecting unborn children from abortion in every State of the 
Union. Since that horrible decision, an estimated 60 million 
unborn American lives have been cut short by the abortion 
industry. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 unborn American 
lives are tragically ended every day. Fortunately, 
notwithstanding efforts like H.R. 3755, that number is on the 
decline in America, thanks in no small part to science- 
science, which proves at six weeks, an unborn child has a 
heartbeat of about 98 beats per minute; science, which proves 
at 10 weeks an unborn child has arms, legs, fingers, and toes, 
and is capable of feeling pain; science, which proves at 15 
weeks, an unborn child has a fully developed heart, pumping 26 
quarts of blood per day.
    As more and more Americans have seen this evidence, states 
have enacted over 1,250 laws since Roe, and about 500 in the 
past decade alone, to protect the life of the unborn child and 
the pregnant mother. Today, two-thirds of Americans believe 
states should make laws regarding the abortion industry and 
that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester. Four 
out of five Americans believe abortion should be illegal in the 
third trimester. Congress must stand with these Americans to 
reject the abortion politics of the left and continue to find a 
way to work together to protect the unborn.
    Dr. Skop, I appreciate you being here, and I would echo the 
comments of the ranking member that you have been treated 
terribly today. The work that you have done is incredibly 
impressive, compassionate, and I want to ask you a couple of 
questions. But first, earlier you tried to speak on Margaret 
Sanger, and Planned Parenthood, and some things like this, and 
I just wanted, if you would like it, to give you an opportunity 
to talk about that if you want.
    Dr. Skop. Sure. Thank you, Congressman. It is a little more 
complicated than what Congresswoman Foxx stated. Margaret 
Sanger, there is quite a lot of documentation that she was a 
eugenicist. Eugenics was very popular in our country at that 
time, and she has made many statements talking about the types 
of people that she did not want to be born. Recently, the 
Manhattan Planned Parenthood took her name off of their 
building as they acknowledged that she had made statements that 
were not in line with what we believe today.
    Alan Guttmacher was the second head of Planned Parenthood 
about the time that abortion became legal. That is when it made 
its foray into abortion provision, and I think everyone is 
aware they provide more than half of the abortions in our 
country today. So she was not in favor of abortion. Abortion 
was illegal and dangerous at the time that she did her work, 
but she was in favor of keeping certain ethnic groups and 
financial groups from having children.
    Mr. LaTurner. I think one of the things, you know, when we 
look at these laws, I was in the Kansas state legislature and 
worked on banning sex selection abortions, for example. And 
these laws that we see across the country I am so supportive 
of, and we have to continue to fight on this front. I also 
think the pro-life movement needs to do a better job of showing 
compassion for the mothers that find themselves in this 
terrible circumstance. I think you are one of the people doing 
that great work. Could you talk specifically about the work 
your pregnancy centers do to support pregnant women and their 
loved ones?
    Dr. Skop. Thank you so much for that question. Yes, my 
passion for this is, as I said earlier, that women never have 
to address this horrible decision, no matter how they choose. 
You could see from our witnesses earlier today, even though 
they feel like the decision they made allowed them to succeed 
in life, it is still painful. It is still painful. And I have 
to say, Dr. Ross, your story of bearing the child of a rape, 
that hurts my heart that you went through that. We do need to 
acknowledge that children do not have to be a barrier to 
success in life as women. Gloria Steinem, I appreciate the 
groundwork that, as a feminist, that she laid so that we women 
are extraordinarily successful. I have three children. I love 
them all dearly. I worked until the day I gave birth for all 
three of those children. It did not stop me from succeeding in 
my chosen profession.
    We must, I think, as a country get past the partisanship 
that says we either have to have it available for everybody in 
every circumstance or we have to totally limit it entirely. We 
are all concerned about human trafficking. Letting medical 
abortion pills be readily available over the internet by mail 
order, how does that help trafficked women? Interactions with 
the medical system are one of the ways that they can be 
identified and helped, but these pregnant women, many 
trafficked women, probably most trafficked women have 
abortions, have unintended pregnancies and abortions. And if we 
are just allowing their traffickers to have these pills to end 
their pregnancies so that they never see the healthcare system, 
that is wrong.
    As I said, in the work that do, I want to provide women----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Can you just sum up?
    Dr. Skop. OK. Sorry.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The time has expired. Mm-hmm.
    Dr. Skop. Effective contraception so that they don't get 
pregnant, healthy relationships so that if they do get 
pregnant, it is a couple together who can raise a child, sex 
education so that children understand the importance of 
abstinence and which contraception works well and which does 
not. Those are----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Illinois is 
recognized. Mr. Davis, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I want to thank 
you for calling this very important hearing. I also want to 
thank all of the witnesses for their compelling testimoneys, 
and especially I want to thank my sister colleagues for their 
revelations and sharing their experiences. Ms. Aziz, I want to 
start by thanking you for sharing your story with the committee 
and with the world. I know that I speak for many of my 
colleagues and the public in saying that we are better for 
having your voice here today. With your permission, I would 
like to ask you about some of the experiences you shared in 
your testimony, including some you identified as being 
traumatic. Is that OK with you?
    Ms. Aziz. Absolutely.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you. In your powerful written testimony, 
you noted that the unlicensed clinicians who were pressuring 
you to continue carrying your unwanted pregnancy, misinformed 
you about your ability to pursue a medication abortion. Is that 
true?
    Ms. Aziz. Yes.
    Mr. Davis. Let me ask you. How did you feel when you were 
told that you could not receive a medication abortion 
treatment?
    Ms. Aziz. Thank you for your question. I want to start by 
saying I do not regret either of my abortions. I do regret my 
experience at the crisis pregnancy center. The most traumatic 
part of my experience was one of those centers and how I was 
treated there, and I hope that they all shut down because they 
exist to manipulate and prey on vulnerable pregnant people. And 
I just wanted to acknowledge a lot of people are being left out 
of this conversation today because, as we know, people get 
pregnant and not just women. But I hear people over and over 
and over again say women get pregnant, but that is excluding 
people that should be a part of this conversation.
    As for the crisis pregnancy center, I let them know that I 
am a survivor of sexual assault, and I developed a medical 
condition as a result of it called vaginismus, which makes any 
sort of penetration very difficult, so naturally, I had anxiety 
about a transvaginal ultrasound. There were these two ladies 
trying to imitate doctors wearing lab coats, clearly not 
medical professionals, and I told them and the sonographer, you 
know, you are not a licensed sonographer, but someone wearing 
scrubs. I told them I was scared, and the response was, 
``Honey, you are pregnant now. You should learn to deal with 
pain.''
    As someone who has worked in the role of an advocate for 
sexual assault survivors and as a survivor, that is disgusting, 
and I don't know why crisis pregnancy centers are allowed to 
exist and prey on people. I just think they should all shut 
down and none of them should exist because they do not help 
pregnant people. They prey on pregnant people.
    Mr. Davis. You mentioned in your written testimony that you 
actually had a relative who assisted you when you were in need. 
And that made me remember the times when I have driven young 
would-be mothers to the emergency room of hospitals after they 
had attempted an abortion with a coat hanger. Had not your 
family been able to help you financially, what do you think 
your experiences would have been like?
    Ms. Aziz. I just want to say S.B. 8 does worry me about 
people using unsafe alternatives, but I do want to assure 
everybody, as someone who has had two medication abortions, 
that it is very, very safe, and it is nothing like people here 
have described. You know, I was very angry that I had to travel 
all the way to Colorado Springs and spend $2,000 that I didn't 
even have, that a relative paid for me to have access to my 
abortion. But all I really did was go to another state, 
navigate all of these numerous barriers for a provider to give 
me a pill that I could have taken at home in Texas, and that is 
what I should have been able to do.
    Medication abortions are safe. They are very safe, and they 
are a great way to have an abortion if that is what somebody 
chooses. It is the pregnant person's choice. If I was to get 
pregnant again and I did not want to carry the pregnancy to 
term, my choice would be a third medication abortion.
    Mr. Davis. Let me thank you for sharing your experiences 
with us. Madam Chairman, let me thank you again. This has 
indeed been a very informative hearing, and I couldn't thank 
you more for holding it. And I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, is recognized 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Grothman. Sure. I guess this can be either of you, 
though, I guess, primarily Dr. Skop. If this bill would ever 
become law, I kind of think how is this going to affect 
America. And, of course, I was in the state legislature for a 
long period of time, and we had a variety of bills. While we 
would have liked to ban abortion, we had a variety of bills to 
hopefully change the way people looked at it. And one of those 
bills was the 24-hour period bill that I had in Wisconsin that, 
I think, was kind of the model for the country.
    And in researching it, you know, we talked about all the 
women who were being pushed into having an abortion. And also, 
after the bill passed, it came out in court that, I cannot 
remember whether it was either one-seventh or one-tenth who 
showed up the first day didn't show up the second day, which 
would indicate that without the bill, the abortion providers, 
like too many people in the medical profession, but these guys 
in particular, they just wanted to get the abortion done and 
get their cash and not have to worry that someone might not 
come back for the second appointment. Could you comment on why 
anybody would want to put somebody through an abortion 45 
minutes, an hour after they walked in the door without letting 
them go home and collect their thoughts, and see what they 
really felt?
    Dr. Skop. I don't know the mindset of what would encourage 
that, but I think if all of us believe in choice, this is a 
type of a decision that, admittedly, some women can make this 
decision and move on, but I have seen many women who have made 
the decision and have regretted it intensely. So this is the 
type of decision that should allow time for reflection. So I 
would think that anybody who cares about choice would be 
interested in making sure that a woman has all the information 
at her disposal. She knows how far along she is. She knows what 
the complications that might result from the procedure could 
be. She understands the development of her child, and then she 
has time to reflect. As you said, many women do not come back 
after the waiting period, and I think that those are the women 
who have reflected and said, you know what? This is not the 
choice I want to make. Carrying my baby is the choice I want to 
make.
    So if we are not motivated by a thought that every abortion 
is a good abortion, which I think all of us intuitively realize 
that is not the case. I mean, you know, perhaps population 
control motivations, perhaps eugenic motivations may consider 
that every abortion is a good abortion. But those of us who are 
thinking individuals who understand the complexity of people's 
lives must recognize that there are some people who may move on 
from an abortion without much effect, and there are others who 
are going to be dramatically changed. And we need to make sure 
that both of those people have the information that they need 
in order to make the right choice.
    Mr. Grothman. Also it is an opportunity for some of these 
children's lives to be saved. And if you talk to anybody who 
has been adopted or people who have adopted children, you 
realize that, you know, when these women don't come back after 
24 hours, a really fortunate thing has happened. I will make 
one final comment before I let you go. I have in my political 
life run into several pro-Planned Parenthood people, and they 
do focus, I am aware, you know, that they really do like to 
highlight the black population.
    But we will give you one more question. At present, case 
law holds that states may prohibit abortion after viability as 
long as there are exceptions for life and health, especially 
with major advances in medicine and technology. Do you believe 
it is much clearer that we have a human life today than, say, 
30 years ago?
    Dr. Skop. Absolutely. The ultrasound technology, fetoscopy, 
intrauterine surgery on these 18-week babies. But you know 
what? Even shortly after the time of Roe, Dr. Bernard Nathanson 
was one of the founding members of NARAL, and he was 
instrumental in the Roe decision. He was an abortionist, and as 
he saw more ultrasound technology and recognized the humanity 
of the fetus, he wrote a letter in the New England Journal of 
Medicine where he said I am increasingly convinced that I have 
presided over 60,000 deaths. He became pro-life because of the 
ultrasound technology.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. The gentlelady's time has expired. 
The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, 
our twins, who were conceived through in vitro fertilization 22 
years ago, after they were born, we were told that the only way 
we could conceive a child was through IVF. Four years later, I 
missed a period, but learned I was pregnant with our very much 
wanted daughter at eight weeks, and that is because millions of 
women have irregular menstrual cycles, and often times, by the 
time you realize you have missed your period, you are past the 
six-week limitation in the Texas law. This is common. So, Dr. 
Skop, your testimony that suggests that most women have plenty 
of time within that six-week limitation is divorced from 
reality, from biology, and science, and you know it.
    Now, moving on to the extremism in the Texas law. We heard 
the pain and confusion and challenges that Ms. Ross and her son 
have gone through as a result of being forced to share custody 
with her attacker. I just can't even imagine. But members 
should be aware that 34 states require a conviction of rape to 
terminate the parental rights of the attacker. Forcing women to 
give birth from a pregnancy conceived from rape is forcing 
women to repeatedly be re-victimized by their rapist, and that 
is outrageous and unacceptable.
    Now, soon after the Supreme Court allowed Texas' six-week 
abortion ban to take effect, anti-choice lawmakers in several 
states announced similar legislative abortion bans, including 
my own state of Florida. These grotesque Texas and Florida 
bills, in particular, pose some of the greatest threats to 
abortion access in U.S. history. One of the most alarming 
aspects of these draconian and blatantly unconstitutional bills 
is that they allow private citizens from anywhere to become 
bounty hunters to enforce the six-week abortion ban. This is 
the snitch society and Big Brother vigilantism of Maduro's 
Venezuela and Castro's Cuba that my constituents have fled. 
Anyone, from local anti-abortion protesters to out-of-state 
lobbying groups, can sue any individual helping patients access 
abortion, and that could include a clinic receptionist or even 
someone who drives a patient to an appointment, including 
family members, friends, or even Uber or Lyft drivers.
    Ms. Murray, as a legal expert, can you tell us what this 
means for people accessing abortion in Texas, and what would it 
mean for individuals in Florida if that copycat bill was signed 
into law? And in your answer, can you provide a little more 
detail about the nefarious nature of this bounty system in 
enforcement strategy? Do you believe the goal was really to 
have private citizens actually file lawsuits or just create an 
intimidation culture of fear that will prevent women from 
receiving abortion care?
    Ms. Murray. Thank you for the question. I am delighted to 
answer it and to set the record straight on S.B. 8, Texas' 
flagrantly unconstitutional six-week ban on abortion. The law 
was purposely crafted to avoid judicial review. Typically, when 
abortion bans are put into law, they are immediately enjoined 
because they violate the Constitution, and Federal courts will 
stop them from going into effect while their constitutionality 
is being litigated. In order to avoid that, Jonathan Mitchell, 
who is the architect of S.B. 8 and also the author of the bill 
previously referenced that cites Lawrence v. Texas and 
Obergefell v. Hodges as the next precedents to be overruled 
after Roe, he crafted this law for the purpose of taking the 
state out of the enforcement mechanism and delegating 
enforcement to private individuals.
    The purpose of this is twofold: one, to dismantle any 
system of support that a pregnant person might rely upon in 
seeking abortion care, and two, to ensure that a Federal Court 
cannot come and stop this law from going into effect. That 
produces the procedural irregularities that the Supreme Court 
cited in allowing this ban to go into effect, and it is the 
reason why today there are millions of people of reproductive 
age in Texas who are without the same constitutional rights 
that the rest of us enjoy.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Professor Ross, I want to 
turn to you. I am concerned that anti-abortion extremists will 
use social media companies, like Twitter and Facebook, to 
coordinate the harassment and bounty hunting of women seeking 
abortion. Due to systemic racial and economic barriers, we know 
that black women will likely suffer the brunt of this harm. And 
while some companies have stepped in to prevent this kind of 
egregious behavior, others have failed to act, which is a clear 
violation of their community guidelines. Do technology 
companies also have an obligation to stop abortion bounty 
hunting on their platform to ensure community safety?
    Ms. Ross. Well, I think technology companies need to be 
regulated simply because they have been acting like a utility 
and they have our privacy information. They don't seem to have 
a moral center about how their platforms get used to challenge 
democracy, and they don't seem to care because they monetize 
hatred and outrage and laugh all the way to the bank, while 
those of us who are vulnerable can be targeted. So yes, I think 
that is a real discussion we need to have, and I do want to 
raise one point, and that is talk about how many people think 
that black women are threatened by Planned Parenthood.
    I have never worked for Planned Parenthood. I am not an 
employee, but I am going to speak up on behalf of black women 
who are constantly told that we are not smart enough to 
determine for our lives the decisions we need to make. And I 
really think these white saviors need to stop acting like 
racists, because if you don't want to be called racists, stop 
mouthing those racist talking points against black women 
because we see you for what you are doing, not for the mealy 
words you are saying. You don't care about our lives, you don't 
care about our children, and we don't care to have you 
denigrating Planned Parenthood which does work to save our 
lives because you think we don't see through your hypocrisy.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back 
the balance of my time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. 
Norman, is now recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Norman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As I think 
Congressman Comer had mentioned at the offset, this is a sad 
day. With the atrocities that are happening all over this 
country from Afghanistan where people are getting slaughtered, 
to the border where you talk about women's rights, women's 
freedoms. Women are getting raped. Children are getting raped. 
Drugs are coming across the border. And we are talking here 
today, spending time, the taxpayers' dollars on talking about a 
state issue right now that, really, with the ongoing tragedies 
happening all over the world that are self-inflicted by 
Pennsylvania Avenue, it is amazing that we are doing this.
    But anyway, you know, as I have listened, I have heard the 
words to describe the killing of a child and let me just read 
them: ``a woman's legal right to choose,'' ``a woman's right, 
``women's choice, ``fertilized egg.'' Folks, this is the taking 
of a life, and I know our family has experienced it with a 
daughter having a child after 25 weeks. I think Representative 
Jayapal had mentioned her child was as big as her hand. Our 
grandchild was as big as a hand. They went through the 
decisions that it could affect the life of the mother, could 
affect the long-term health of the child. She chose to have the 
child and the child is up and running. We just celebrated his 
second birthday.
    So, you know, I guess as we talk about this, I would just 
ask, Dr. Skop, the people that you have, I guess, counseled 
after they have had an abortion, in my case, the people that I 
have talked to, anybody that has had an abortion that I have 
talked with has had a tear behind their description of what 
they went through. What is your experience?
    Dr. Skop. Well, I would say it is mixed. Some women will 
not talk to me about it, and, you know, we hear that 1 out of 4 
American women have had abortions. But when I do new patient 
evaluations, it is not nearly 1 out of 4 that will report that 
on their history. So, you know, there was some discussion 
earlier today about shame and stigma, and it is true that women 
experience shame from their abortions, but it is not because of 
Republican lawmakers. It is because they know that they have 
ended the life of their child.
    When counseling a woman, if they do give me the history of 
an abortion, I do try to look into that a little bit. How do 
you feel? Many times just asking very gentle questions 20 years 
later, tears will come to their eyes. So they still feel regret 
and sadness in many cases. Perhaps if they have had multiple 
surgical abortions, I will do proactive monitoring, measuring 
cervical length, you know, make sure that if they are beginning 
to have an incompetent cervix, that we can treat that and we 
can be proactive.
    It wasn't really brought up in this hearing, but I do want 
to make the point, many times we hear about abortion for the 
life of the mother, and as an OB/GYN caring for many women, I 
have never had to refer a patient for an abortion to save her 
life. In the rare event that a fetus does pose a risk to his 
mother's life, I can deliver that baby by C-section or induced 
labor. Many times he can be saved. If he can't, his mother can 
hold him and love him----
    Mr. Grothman. Right.
    Dr. Skop [continuing]. Until he passes away. We can deal 
with these hard cases in a very humane way.
    Mr. Grothman. I agree. Ms. Aziz, you are familiar with if 
somebody is accused of a double homicide, killing a mother 
while she is pregnant. Are you in favor of redoing those laws? 
I mean, if you are in favor of abortion, if the killing of a 
child and a mother is double homicide, would you change the 
laws in the state?
    Ms. Aziz. I am in favor of everyone having equitable and 
fair access to healthcare, which I believe abortion is.
    Mr. Grothman. No, I am talking about double homicides. 
Should that be changed?
    Ms. Aziz. Again, I believe that abortion is healthcare, and 
I just don't see it the way that you do and others.
    Mr. Grothman. What is your definition of homicide?
    Ms. Aziz. I said I don't see abortion as homicide. I see 
abortion as healthcare, so, and for me, there can be no limits 
on healthcare. There can't be circumstances, restrictions. 
Healthcare should always be free, equitable, and everybody 
should have access regardless.
    Mr. Grothman. Yes, but you are not answering my question. 
If you could take the life of a child, if you shoot a mother 
and a child in the womb, why is that a crime, and do you think 
that crime ought to be changed so that it is not double 
homicide.
    Ms. Aziz. I think what is really important is to focus on--
--
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it. Thank you. 
You are not answering my question.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. The gentleman from Vermont, Mr. 
Welch, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank all 
of the witnesses. I also especially want to thank my 
congressional colleagues who spoke this morning and told of 
their deeply personal situations. I applaud them for coming 
forward. I am appalled by the Texas decision as a fundamental 
infringement on the rights of women. I am appalled by the 
aspect of that law that turns citizens into vigilante bounty 
hunters. It is chaos for our country. It totally erodes 
personal respect and the rule of law.
    In Vermont, I am very proud of our legislature and our 
Governor who have passed into law a bill, H. 57, which 
recognizes choice and reproductive care as a fundamental right, 
and it prohibits the state and local government from 
restricting abortion. It upholds the rights of women. It is now 
going to be considered by the people of Vermont as a 
constitutional amendment, and I am totally in support of, of 
course, of Representative Chu's law that I am a co-sponsor of.
    One of the challenges we have in Vermont, it is a very 
rural state, and there are many, many parts of Texas that are 
extraordinarily rural. But it is very difficult with abortion 
restrictions for women in rural areas to get access to anything 
that is it all convenient. And my question, I will start with 
Dr. Moayedi--people living in rural communities where providers 
can be few and far between, women already face challenges to 
get abortion care. In your experience, how do abortion bans and 
the severe restrictions, particularly what we are seeing in 
Texas, affect patients seeking abortion care in rural 
communities?
    Dr. Moayedi. Abortion restrictions are devastating to the 
rural communities that I serve. In Dallas, on any day, 
providing abortion care, of course, prior to this law being 
enacted, I might see several patients that have driven 3, 4, 
500 miles to get to Dallas for care. That is completely 
unethical and unconscionable that someone has to drive that far 
to get pregnancy care.
    Mr. Welch. Ms. Aziz, I want to thank you for your work. How 
does the Texas Equal Access Fund support rural patients in need 
of abortion care? There are real practical challenges that have 
to be met, and I would like you to explain how you manage to 
help folks in your area.
    Ms. Aziz. Thank you for your question. As Dr. Moayedi said, 
rural folks face additional challenges when it comes to 
accessing abortion. You know, there aren't that many abortion 
clinics left in the state of Texas, and people have to travel 
really, really far. Before S.B. 8, people had to travel really, 
really far, so now, as I said, it is practically a logistical 
nightmare. Even if someone were to know that they were pregnant 
by six weeks, by the time they might be able to come up with 
the money or by the time they would be able to find a clinic 
and make an appointment, they could be well over that limit. So 
what we really need to focus on is how people are not able to 
access care, people in rural communities especially.
    Mr. Welch. Right.
    Ms. Aziz. But people are not able to access care that they 
deserve because of S.B. 8.
    Mr. Welch. You know, and sometimes it gets abstract here 
because the very real financial pressures on a young person 
that is in need of an abortion, even with a job, the gas money, 
the childcare money, and taking time off from work, which they 
may or not be able to do. Can you just comment a little bit on 
those really practical, real-world challenges that a young 
woman would face?
    Ms. Aziz. Absolutely, and I can actually talk about my own 
personal experience. When I had my first abortion, I was that 
young woman, you know, who was in college, who was new to a 
country, a new immigrant, new to the legal system. I didn't 
know much about the U.S., and where I come from, abortion is 
not treated the way it is here in the U.S., so the culture 
shock added to all of that. I had to travel, as I said, to 
Colorado Springs because of the misinformation provided to me 
by the crisis pregnancy center. And I wish I didn't have to 
because, clearly, I didn't have the money, and if I didn't have 
a relative who stepped in, then I wouldn't be sitting before 
you today at all. I wouldn't have my daughter that I love with 
my whole heart today. I wouldn't be married to my husband, you 
know.
    And for a flight alone, you know, a last-minute flight when 
you are trying to scramble and you are trying to make sure that 
you can get your procedure when you need it, a last-minute 
flight was nearly $400. A lot of people may disagree, but as 
someone who has had that experience, a support person in a new 
state is also very important. So for that support person to 
also buy a flight, you are looking at $800 alone in flights. My 
procedure was about $680, but my blood type is also negative, 
so I needed a RhoGAM shot to protect a future pregnancy. That 
was over $120. I was extremely sick and forced to travel, take 
a flight, go to another state.
    I needed pain medication, but I also needed nausea 
medication because I would throw up about 13, 14 times a day. I 
was extremely dehydrated. I couldn't keep my head straight, but 
I was being forced to travel from Texas all the way to Colorado 
Springs for healthcare. It was ridiculous. Not to mention, you 
know, I love my family and I love my friends who came through 
for me, but there are other costs such as food. And I worked a 
$10-an-hour job at the time, so I missed work, but I was only 
able to make it work because of my family member who paid for 
everything. Otherwise, you are also talking about the loss of 
wages for those two weeks that I missed work. I quoted it 
around nearly $2,000 for me.
    Mr. Welch. Well, thank you.
    Ms. Aziz. So if you just imagine, that is not a cost that 
is on my----
    Mr. Welch. My time is up, but that is very graphic, very 
real.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Great. Thank you.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, is recognized for 
five minutes. Mr. Biggs.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, Madam Chairwoman, I 
am deeply opposed to the premise of this hearing, and I am 
sincerely disappointed that you have chosen to use the 
committee's time and resources on this topic of expanding 
abortion access rather than conducting legitimate oversight of 
President Biden's Administration and its disastrous policies. 
Disastrous policies. We are discussing the Democrats' assertion 
that we must expand access to a procedure that has killed an 
estimated 62 million babies since Roe v. Wade was decided. Just 
last week, the House passed legislation that, if enacted, would 
codify Roe v. Wade and would make every state in the country a 
late-term abortion state. And last week, the Democrats voted 
not to preserve the life of a baby born alive after an 
abortion. So I am really disturbed by the premise of this 
hearing.
    Dr. Skop, I am going to go read some statements with regard 
to certain findings in an article that I will submit to the 
record later, Madam Chair. This is from a journal called 
Journal of Medical Ethics by Dr. Stuart Derbyshire and John 
Bachman, who wrote, ``Current neuroscientific evidence supports 
the possibility of fetal pain before the consensus cutoff of 24 
weeks.'' In fact, they go on to conclude that a baby in utero 
may feel pain as early as 12 weeks. Your comments, please.
    Dr. Skop. You know, that article is very interesting 
because Dr. Derbyshire is well known as an expert in the field. 
And, in fact, ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and 
Gynecologists, in their statement saying that fetal pain does 
not occur until the third trimester, quoted Dr. Derbyshire. The 
other paper that they quoted was Susan Lee, and that was a very 
biased paper written by an abortion provider. Nonetheless, Dr. 
Derbyshire is a pro-choice man, but he also is willing to 
follow the science where it goes, and he has become convinced 
with his research that there is compelling evidence that pain 
exists as early as 12 weeks. His previous statements, he went 
and said, you know what, I was wrong. So I wish we could all do 
that, that we could all re-examine our biases and look at the 
current evidence and decide that perhaps in some ways we have 
been wrong.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. And from another piece, I am going to 
quote from it: ``Today, during a fetal surgery, a specialist in 
fetal anesthesia is invariably present to administer a general 
anesthetic to the baby as well as a paralytic agent and an 
opioid.'' Is that accurate?
    Dr. Skop. That is accurate. That is the standard of care 
for fetal surgery.
    Mr. Biggs. And why would you provide fetal anesthesia and a 
paralytic agent, and maybe even an opioid, to a fetus receiving 
surgery?
    Dr. Skop. Because in that case, the fetus is the patient. 
He is desired. The cognitive dissonance that applies to 
abortion does not apply to him, and so he is treated with care 
and respect.
    Mr. Biggs. I was struck by your earlier testimony that your 
training was that when you are treating someone who is 
pregnant, you are treating two patients. Expand on that, 
please.
    Dr. Skop. Well, I entered the field of OB/GYN because the 
moment that a new baby is born is the most fabulous thing. If 
you haven't seen it, you just have to be there to just 
recognize the miracle of life. I love women as well as the 
fetuses, so I don't want you to think, and I think the 
allegation has been made that somehow I have taken the fetuses' 
side. I just think that women suffer from having this choice so 
readily available, socially, physically, mentally in many 
cases.
    You know, I wanted to say something related to the 
accessibility which kind of relates to what you just said. You 
know, I am a provider in San Antonio, and we have many rural 
women who live around us. We are about two, two-and-a-half 
hours from the border, so I have patients who come to see me 
early in pregnancy once a month, later every two weeks, the 
final month of pregnancy weekly, from those border cities 
driving two-and-a-half hours each way so that I can care for 
their babies. So people are concerned that people might have to 
make two trips to abort their baby, but people who desire a 
baby many times make that trip multiple times, which speaks to 
maybe we should be expanding access to hospitals and prenatal 
care in rural areas instead of just prioritizing abortion.
    Mr. Biggs. Madam Chair, my time has expired. I would like 
to, without objection, submit a couple of articles to the 
record, and I will submit them.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady from California, Ms. 
Jackie Speier, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for 
your participation here. Dr. Moayedi, can you tell me what the 
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says about 
abortion?
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes. I mean, I can't tell you exactly what the 
overall statement is, but that all physicians, all OB/GYNs 
should offer non-biased, evidence-based care, and that abortion 
is part of the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare.
    Ms. Speier. And in the testimony that has been offered 
today, have you heard non-biased statements being made about 
the procedure by your colleague?
    Dr. Moayedi. No, I have not.
    Ms. Speier. Can you elucidate on that, please?
    Dr. Moayedi. Sure. I have heard several racist statements 
and several statements made by white people about what black 
people should or shouldn't do with their pregnancies. That is 
incredibly disturbing to hear white people discussing what 
racism is or is not. I have also heard several pieces of 
misinformation around what medication abortion does or does 
not. These are not chemicals. I think I heard very strange 
terminology used. These are two medications. The first 
medication is called mifepristone. This medication blocks the 
hormone progesterone. It is not some magic toxin. It is a 
simple hormone blocker, and it prevents the pregnancy from 
continuing to grow. This medication can also be used to induce 
birth later in pregnancy, so it is safe to take throughout 
pregnancy. The second medications are called misoprostol. These 
medications both of us used to induce labor. We use it to 
prepare a cervix prior to gynecologic surgery, and it is also 
used in abortion care. So these two medications are incredibly 
safe.
    Ms. Speier. So according to a 2018 report by the National 
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, abortion is 
safer than childbirth, colonoscopies, dental procedures, 
plastic surgery, and tonsillectomies. And yet, facilities that 
provide abortion care are more likely to be subjected to 
medically unnecessary, politically motivated regulations that 
only make it more difficult to provide abortion services. Have 
you encountered such targeted regulations of abortion providers 
where you practice, and if so, how has it affected you?
    Dr. Moayedi. I experience trap laws, targeted regulations 
every single day that I provide abortion care, from where I 
have to go to provide abortion care instead of being able to 
provide it in my private practice--I have to go provide at a 
specially licensed clinic in our state--from the ways that I 
have to counsel patients. The state requires that I lie to 
patients about risks associated with the medications or with 
the abortion. Really top to bottom, everything about the care 
that we provide is regulated by the state.
    We also have fake clinics all across our state that lie to 
people, that perform ultrasounds without medical supervision. I 
have taken care of people that have been told that their 
pregnancy is six weeks when they are actually 18 weeks. They 
have been told their pregnancy is 18 weeks when they are 
actually six weeks. And the intention is to lie to them, 
deceive them, and coerce them out of their abortion decisions.
    Ms. Speier. Is it uncommon in your practice that a woman 
comes to you not even knowing she is pregnant and she is 16 
weeks?
    Dr. Moayedi. There are people that present not knowing how 
many weeks they are. That is not very common. The overwhelming 
scientific evidence shows that people are pretty good at 
knowing how pregnant they are, although it might take them a 
little while to find out. Of course, you have to miss your 
period first----
    Ms. Speier. Or maybe more than once, right?
    Dr. Moayedi. Right. Exactly.
    Ms. Speier. I mean, because I think that what we forget, 
and certainly our male colleagues wouldn't have any experience 
with it, but often times you will miss your period because of 
some stress-related occasion, and so you just kind of file it 
away.
    Dr. Moayedi. Right.
    Ms. Speier. And then you are another month. And sometimes 
it is not until the third month without your period that you 
think, well, maybe I am pregnant.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes.
    Ms. Speier. Does that happen? Has that happened----
    Dr. Moayedi. It does, yes. And, you know, the other thing I 
want to make clear is that abortion is not just for people that 
forgot to take contraception or their contraception failed. So 
it is false to say that if we just got everyone an IUD, we 
wouldn't have abortion anymore. People also choose abortion 
with very highly desired pregnancies because many things in 
their lives change, and so it is false to say that this is just 
a contraception issue.
    Ms. Speier. I thank you. One last question. How much does 
it cost? Insurance can't cover abortion in Texas. Is that 
correct?
    Dr. Moayedi. That is true.
    Ms. Speier. How much does it cost to get an abortion in 
Texas?
    Dr. Moayedi. So abortion care is actually incredibly cheap.
    Ms. Speier. Maybe you could provide the answer for the 
record.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes. OK.
    Ms. Speier. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Ms. Herrell is now recognized, from New 
Mexico, for five minutes.
    Ms. Herrell. Thank you, Madam Chair and witnesses. I know 
it has been a very long day, and while I understand this is 
such an important topic for us, I do truly wish we were having 
hearings on the threats to our food supply, the crisis at our 
border, the Afghan evacuee vetting crisis, and even the 
Administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, but we are not. 
This is what we are doing today, and my questions are for Dr. 
Moayedi. And I know we don't have a lot of time, so I will go 
through these questions.
    But I come from a state, the state of New Mexico, where 
obviously late-term abortion is still alive and well. I don't 
support that, but what I do want to ask you is some specific 
questions about the procedure as a whole. And is it true that 
abortion procedures change based on the gestational age and 
size of the unborn child?
    Dr. Moayedi. So if I could finish answering my question 
from before----
    Ms. Herrell. No. Thank you. Please answer my question.
    Dr. Moayedi. And your question again?
    Ms. Herrell. Is it true that abortion procedures change 
based on the gestational age and size of the unborn child?
    Dr. Moayedi. So abortion procedures are individualized to 
the person, where they are at in the pregnancy, their unique 
medical circumstances, and the setting in which we are 
providing the care.
    Ms. Herrell. So what surgical abortion procedures are 
typically used in early pregnancy?
    Dr. Moayedi. So as far as procedural abortion, typically 
early pregnancy, what is offered is either with medications--
the procedure is called a dilation, a dilation and curettage--
or an aspiration abortion.
    Ms. Herrell. Thank you. And why is this procedure not used 
later in pregnancy?
    Dr. Moayedi. This procedure is also used later in 
pregnancy. We just also use other instruments to help us remove 
the pregnancy.
    Ms. Herrell. OK. I thought it was because the tissues grow 
firmer, so it is a more difficult abortion process, and I might 
be wrong there.
    Dr. Moayedi. So that is exactly what I just explained that 
I use the same technique, but I add additional instruments.
    Ms. Herrell. Great. And what abortion procedures are 
typically used after 15 weeks gestation?
    Dr. Moayedi. The same abortion procedure I just described. 
We use a combination of gently dilating the cervix using 
medications and dilators, and then removing the pregnancy using 
suction and instruments.
    Ms. Herrell. So these are more along the line of the 
dismemberment abortion.
    Dr. Moayedi. That is not a medical term.
    Ms. Herrell. But it is used.
    Dr. Moayedi. That is not a medical term.
    Ms. Herrell. The procedure.
    Dr. Moayedi. The procedure is called a dilation and 
evacuation.
    Ms. Herrell. So equal to dismemberment.
    Dr. Moayedi. That is not a medical term.
    Ms. Herrell. Well, I just want to make sure that the public 
can understand exactly what we are talking about because we are 
talking about dismembering a baby with a heartbeat.
    Dr. Moayedi. I am not here to lie to the public.
    Ms. Herrell. Well, I am not here either, not to lie to the 
public, but I do want to speak truth to the public, and so 
let's call it what it is. I am going to say ``dismemberment.'' 
You don't have to respond to that, but we all know that is 
exactly what it is, and people need to understand what we are 
talking about when we are dismembering arms and legs of a 
beating heart baby from a mother. So thank you for those 
answers.
    I would now like to move over to the Republican witness. I 
am just going to ask your opinion. I believe we have a moral 
crisis on our hands in the country. I think if we stop teaching 
children in elementary school how to put condoms on bananas, 
how to stop thinking that having sex with no consequences, 
making personal choices that would not relate to having to make 
a tough decision like this is part of our problem. Help me 
understand what you think of the education, in terms of sexual 
education, and the morality of what we are doing to our youth. 
What is your thought on that?
    Dr. Skop. I think that there is a concern that, for 
whatever reason, we are attempting to normalize sexual behavior 
in young children. I mean, history has shown us that people do 
have sex. Before Roe, obviously there were many women who 
painfully gave their babies up for adoption, which was a very 
sad thing, and women who did seek illegal abortions, but we are 
we are promoting activity that will be followed through. I 
mean, the more you intrigue children by talking about 
sexuality, the more of that behavior you will get. I don't 
think there is any surprise there. The more sexual intercourse 
that occurs, even if there are contraceptives available, the 
more unintended pregnancies you will see. So I agree, we are 
sexualizing children. I am not sure why that is being promoted, 
but the consequence is that we are having more young children 
pregnant, and I agree it is a problem.
    Ms. Herrell. Thank you, and I wish we would all step up to 
the plate and have our moral compasses reexamined and help our 
children make sound decisions. And thank you, Madam Chair. I 
yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlelady from California, Ms. Porter, is now 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Dr. Skop, do 
you believe all black lives matter?
    Dr. Skop. Of course I do.
    Ms. Porter. You have written that widespread abortion in 
the black population has become an ``acceptable'' form of 
racism in the United States today. You wrote this quote, 
``Clearly abortion has disproportionately affected the black 
community, leading to a decrease in their population numbers, 
as well as many adverse consequences to women and children. 
Many of the pathologies''--your word--``affecting the black 
community can be at least partially attributed to the breakdown 
in families and the absence of paternal involvement facilitated 
by abortion. Mental health complications in black women, 
leading to deaths of despair, can be caused by abortion.'' 
Could you explain to me what your expertise and familiarity is 
with black families?
    Dr. Skop. Well, I have a niece and a nephew that are both 
black.
    Ms. Porter. Wonderful. Thank you very much, Dr. Skop. 
Turning now to Professor Murray. How would you respond to this 
argument?
    Ms. Murray. Thank you so much for the question. The 
purported links between abortion and the eugenics movement is a 
subject of my own scholarship. I recently published a paper in 
the Harvard Law Review outlining the ways in which this 
narrative of abortion as eugenics is being used to advance 
race-based grounds for overruling Roe v. Wade. The increased 
interest in this narrative can be traced to Justice Clarence 
Thomas' 2019 concurrence in Box v. Planned Parenthood of 
Indiana and Kentucky. There, Justice Thomas attempted to graft 
abortion to the history of the eugenics movement in the United 
States. Unfortunately, the history upon which he relied to do 
so was woefully incomplete.
    Justice Thomas was correct to note that in the 1920's and 
1930's, the United States was in the grips of eugenics fervor 
and its concomitant interest in racial purity and white 
supremacy. However, in advancing those interests in racial 
purity, the eugenicists did not rely on abortion. Rather, their 
efforts were channeled into bans on interracial marriage, 
immigration laws that kept certain ethnic minorities out of 
this country, and, most importantly, for our purposes, forcible 
and coercive sterilization of those with so-called weak or 
deleterious genes. These sterilization laws were later 
repurposed and redirected in the 1960's toward poor women who 
were receiving public assistance.
    So this is all to say that sterilization, rather than 
abortion, was the eugenicists' preferred means of reproductive 
control. And to the extent that abortion figured into this 
eugenic fervor at all, it was in the effort to compel native-
born white women to reproduce in greater numbers. In the period 
following the Civil War, there was considerable anxiety about 
the changing demographic character of this country. White 
middle-class women were using contraception and abortion to 
limit their families to manageable sizes while immigrant women 
were having babies in record numbers. Fearing the replacement 
of native-born whites by immigrants, policymakers sought to 
reverse the trend among white women by enacting criminal bans 
on abortion throughout this country.
    And then finally, I will just note that some of the members 
of this committee are among the 14 House Republicans who voted 
against making Juneteenth a Federal holiday. When you fail to 
take even this modest step to acknowledge the black experience 
in this country, it is very difficult to take seriously your 
claims that your support of flagrantly unconstitutional 
abortion restrictions is animated by concern for black women 
and our children.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Mr. Welch.
    [Presiding.] The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    [No response.]
    Mr. Welch. I think you may be muted.
    Mr. Fallon. Mr. Chair, can you hear me?
    Mr. Welch. We can now. Thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. Oh, OK. Thank you so much. This committee is 
the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and I don't understand 
why we are now feeling compelled to oversee state governments 
and completely abdicate our responsibility with the Federal 
Government. And we have already considered H.R. 3755, so the 
old saying about putting the cart before the horse, hell, the 
horse is already in the barn. I don't see why we are having a 
hearing after the fact, and there are so many other things that 
we should be talking about. But I really have to take issue 
with my colleague with the questioning. I thought it was 
incredibly bush league to ask a witness of question and cut the 
witness off after about four seconds. I wouldn't like it if a 
Republican member did that. So, Dr. Skop, I would like to give 
you a chance to actually answer that question that you were 
asked a minute ago.
    Dr. Skop. Yes. I believe it was related to what I had 
written about my concerns about abortion in the black 
community, and, again, this is not my lived experience. I am 
not in any way trying to say that I understand the 
circumstances, but I do know, as I stated earlier, that 67 
percent of black children are born to unmarried mothers. We all 
know that poverty is much, much higher for an unmarried mother, 
and it is not unique to black men. There are many men across 
the country who allow a woman the option of abortion, and if 
they choose to have the child, they let them be the single 
mother to raise the child. It is just the breakdown of the 
family, and I think we could probably chase this subject around 
all day, like, what has happened that families don't stay 
together. But hopefully, we can all acknowledge that for the 
sake of the children, having two parents in the home to help 
each other out and to model wise behavior for the children, 
and, in many cases, to bring in an income sufficient to keep 
the family out of poverty, are all things that I would think we 
would all aspire to.
    So the article that was quoted was just my attempt to 
explore some of these issues and how they might be linked to 
abortion. Like I mentioned earlier, I am terribly concerned 
that black women have a maternal mortality three times that of 
white women. I think there are a number of factors we could 
look at, including, again, poverty, genetic factors, lack of 
support. I mean, it is a very nuanced conversation, and I wish 
that people in the halls of power that had the ability to 
change things were able to look into some of these nuances and 
give some consideration to whether the policies that their 
particular party promotes are always in the best interest of 
women, children, families, men. But it is a big, big discussion 
clearly.
    Mr. Fallon. Absolutely. Have you ever come across any kind 
of studies that could shed light on what the African-American 
population of this country would be if there wasn't abortion in 
this country?
    Dr. Skop. Well, I have seen a figure that probably 18 to 20 
million black babies have been aborted. Now, clearly, many of 
those, had they gone to term, you know, I don't think we can 
say necessarily that would be the increase in the population, 
but I think that clearly we would have a much larger population 
if these children were being born.
    Mr. Fallon. Sure. Sure. You know, listen, in a perfect 
world, I would think and hope that everyone could agree that 
there wouldn't be abortion. I mean, I know that is hyperbolic, 
but that would be the way I would want to go. And furthermore, 
just in the last few seconds that I have, I just simply wish 
that this committee would do more of what it is supposed to do. 
We have a crisis on the border, and we have the origins of 
COVID. Did it come out of a lab in China? All evidence points 
to it other than a smoking gun that is only the preponderance 
of the evidence, but beyond a shadow of a doubt that it 
probably did. This is exactly what this committee should be 
doing and looking at the border. And by the way, if COVID is a 
threat, why do we let 1.5 million people that we don't know 
into the country and they are not mandatory----
    Mr. Welch. The gentleman's time----
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, sir. I yield back.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you, Mr. Fallon.
    The chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 
Johnson, for five minutes.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Within regular order, 
I have been waiting for my opportunity to speak, and I want to 
thank the chair for holding this very important hearing, which 
is very timely as well. And I also want to thank each of the 11 
witnesses for their testimony today. There is a reason why 
there were no men testifying today. It is because this topic is 
about women's freedom. At a time when we have Republicans 
putting forward the proposition that individual freedom is at 
risk because of COVID-19 masks and vaccine mandates, those very 
same Republicans, talking out of the other side of their 
mouths, those are the same Republicans, the majority of whom 
are men, would deny women the freedom to make medical decisions 
over their own bodies. How duplicitous and hypocritical is 
that?
    My opinion is that abortion is a medical issue, not a 
political issue, and a woman should have the freedom to choose 
whether to obtain this medical procedure, subject to certain 
protections for a viable fetus that has grown from a fertilized 
egg. I believe that Roe v. Wade provides a thoughtful 
framework, the trimester analysis, to this human rights issue. 
Pregnancy is a medical issue that is female-centric. In an 
ideal world it would be only women who get to decide the 
Nation's policies on this uniquely female medical procedure, or 
at least women would make up the majority of those who seek to 
control whether this medical procedure would be available to 
them. But unfortunately, men have turned the issue of abortion 
into a political issue, and men make up 73 percent of the 
deciders here in Congress, and Republican deciders in Congress, 
who are the main drivers politicizing abortions, are 86 percent 
male. So much for women's freedom among Republicans.
    It is beyond hypocritical for my Republican colleagues, who 
profess to carry a philosophy of limited government, to support 
laws that insert the government into the most private of 
women's healthcare decisions. And that is why I was proud to 
vote for the Women's Health Protection Act legislation that 
would codify Roe v. Wade. We must act now to protect the 
freedom women have to make their own healthcare decisions over 
their own bodies. Ms. Ross, can you explain where abortion 
restrictions and bans fit in the history of state control of 
the bodies and reproductive autonomy of black women?
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Congressman. I live in Georgia, so I 
am very proud of you.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
    Ms. Ross. I first have to remark on something that I 
couldn't believe I heard out of somebody's mouth, and that is 
that they want 18 million more black people in America when we 
have got a few hundred thousand at the border that they won't 
let in. But that is just me that notices the hypocrisy and the 
ridiculousness of trying to make race-based arguments out of 
the mouths of people who only enact race-based policies against 
black people. So I will just let that go.
    I think that it is very important for us to understand the 
intersection of racial justice policies, and gender justice 
policies, and reproductive justice policies, because you don't 
understand why these bans on abortion are not about having more 
black and brown babies born. They want more white babies to be 
born, because if they can restrict abortion to black and brown 
women, they would send limousines to take us to the clinic. I 
know that for a fact. And whether or not you believe me, look 
at the disparate treatment that our children get once they are 
born, whether they go through a school-to-prison pipeline, or 
have a property-tax-funded school system where, by definition, 
poorer neighborhoods have poorer schools; the way we won't 
address gun violence or lack of healthcare, environmental 
problems, and lack of clean drinking water. I mean, when you 
put it all together, you can't separate this fight for abortion 
rights from the fight for voting rights, for civil rights, for 
environmental justice.
    And one thing that infuriates me is they think that we are 
too simplistic, as if we are some enslaved people, who can't do 
an analysis of what they are really saying when they talk out 
of both sides of their mouths. There should be masks, by the 
way, because like you say, they won't wear a mask to protect 
public health, but they want to be in my bedroom and in my body 
telling me what to do with that most private decision about 
whether to commit my life to another person's life.
    Ms. Johnson. It is inconsistent. Professor Murray, is it 
your opinion----
    Mr. Welch. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
    The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Donalds, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Donalds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I mean, first and 
foremost, I do want to establish something. Abortion and the 
decision any woman has to make with respect to an abortion is 
probably one of the most emotional decisions that they will 
ever encounter. I have had an opportunity to talk with and meet 
with many women who have both gone through that decision and 
have actually executed it and had the abortion and those who 
went up to the line and chose not to have the abortion, and it 
is heart wrenching. It is gut wrenching.
    But we have a problem. The Oversight Committee has no 
jurisdiction over what the state of Texas has done. Zero. This 
is now the second time in this committee that we have listened 
to an open hearing amongst this full committee about something 
that the state of Texas has done through their legislative 
capacity in their state. You see, the Oversight Committee's 
jurisdiction, we are the main investigative committee of all of 
the committees that exist here on Capitol Hill dealing with the 
executive branch, with the U.S. Government, the Federal 
Government. So we are talking about what has happened in Texas 
with respect to their abortion law, or what we did several 
months ago with the state of Texas with respect to their 
election law, instead of actually covering, you know, COVID-19 
and the American Rescue Plan, which are on the tabs for this 
committee's website. The committee has not had one full hearing 
dealing with either of those two issues.
    The committee has not addressed the growing concern and 
some of the growing scientific data that is coming up with 
respect to natural immunity versus vaccinated immunity. The 
committee has not heard at any time in the 117th Congress 
anything dealing with that. The committee has not discussed the 
fact that there are American citizens who are being compelled 
to vaccinate or they will lose their job, whether they actually 
have immunities from COVID-19 or not. The Oversight Committee 
has not brought that up once. We are not even discussing it. It 
is not something that the chairwoman is even thinking about 
bringing.
    We have not discussed the American Rescue Plan and the very 
clear data that exists that the American Rescue Plan has put 
downward pressure on small business owners to be able to hire 
people to come back to work in their businesses all across the 
country. We have definitely not discussed the southern border 
and the over 1.5 million people who have entered the country 
illegally this calendar year. We are not talking about the 
children who are being trafficked by coyotes. We are not 
talking about the billions of dollars that drug cartels are 
making allowing people to cross our southern border illegally.
    And last but not least, we have not talked about 
Afghanistan in an open hearing, and I do want to acknowledge 
what the chairwoman said earlier today. Yes, the committee has 
had a classified briefing on Afghanistan. That briefing was a 
joke. There was nothing that was disseminated in that briefing 
that you couldn't find out on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. There was 
nothing in that briefing that, if you go and read other 
classified reports, that what was in the classified briefing 
was not as detailed as the classified reports. This committee 
has not had an open hearing about Afghanistan considering the 
fact that Afghanistan blew up in front of the face of the 
American people and the world. And instead of holding 
Afghanistan hearings in open session where members of this 
committee, who are the main investigative arm of the U.S. House 
of Representatives, I have found to be laughable.
    We have not discussed, and I hope that the chairwoman would 
actually hold a hearing on the fact, that Marine Lieutenant 
Colonel Scheller is currently being held in the brig for 
expressing his viewpoint on social media that there must be 
accountability for what happened in Afghanistan. Yet at the 
same time, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral 
Milley, is walking around Capitol Hill while, in the meantime, 
having conversations with Bob Woodward. And the Oversight 
Committee is not discussing that.
    What happens in the life of a woman is very personal. Very 
personal. But what the state of Texas does, or the state of 
California does, or the state of New York does is what happens 
in those state legislatures and what those Governors sign. The 
purpose of this committee is not to go back and second guess 
what states are doing with respect to their legislative power 
because that is actually in direct contravention to the 
principle of federalism upon which the U.S. Government was 
actually created and the United States Constitution was signed. 
The framers of the Constitution would have never signed a 
Constitution if it allowed this body and any other bodies to go 
in and second guess legislation that was signed in several 
states. Never would have happened.
    Madam Chair, we have broad authority do so many things. I 
only laid out a few today, but that is what we should be 
investigating. We should not be going into the state of Texas, 
and, frankly, we should not be using the committee's time to 
create, frankly, political sidetracks over the other issues 
that are existing in the United States today that the American 
people want resolution to and they do want people to be held 
accountable for. And with that, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman is aware that we have a subcommittee on this 
committee that focuses only on COVID-19 and had a hearing 
yesterday and many others on every aspect that you mentioned. 
And you may not have thought that the classified briefing 
should have been classified, but there were many government 
officials there giving information about what was happening in 
Afghanistan and the procedures and the process of helping our 
allies be removed from Afghanistan and the status of the 
machinery that was left there. Also very important.
    And the gentleman may not think that the fate of half the 
population of America is very important. I think it is very 
important. We have efforts trying to nationalize a woman's 
body, to make decisions about how their bodies are going to be 
used and whether or not they can make decisions about their own 
healthcare and their own reproductive rights. I find it 
extremely important. You may not think it is important. I would 
think that certainly half of America thinks it is important. 
Certainly every woman is very concerned about her ability to 
make decisions about her own healthcare.
    With that, I now call on the gentleman----
    Mr. Donalds. Will the chairwoman yield?
    Chairwoman Maloney. I am calling on the gentleman from 
Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes. The time is late, and we have many, 
many more people who want to ask questions. Mr. Sarbanes, you 
are now recognized.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you Madam Chair. I appreciate the 
opportunity, and I want to echo what you just said about, first 
of all, the committee's capacity to keep an eye on all of the 
other issues that you just mentioned, but certainly the 
appropriateness of our taking up this issue today. And I want 
to salute the witnesses and thank them for their time. It has 
been a long day, but the testimony has been powerful. I also 
want to thank our colleagues who spoke on the first panel for 
their very moving testimony and their leadership here in 
Congress on this issue and many, many others.
    I also want to thank the abortion care providers in 
Maryland that I had a chance to work with when was an attorney 
in private practice. I spent many years representing them and 
was able to see up close, firsthand, personally, the amount of 
attention, diligence, professionalism, and compassion that they 
brought to their jobs and their responsibilities. And that 
helped shape my perspective and commitment on this issue.
    I want to come back and emphasize something we have heard 
today. It has been sort of alluded to. I want to put a 
punctuation mark on it. And that is that, in many respects, 
this is all about power. We know that the wealthy, the white, 
the privileged, in many instances will find their way around 
abortion restrictions like the ones we are seeing in Texas. 
That is just the way the world. And marginalized communities, 
people of color will bear the brunt of these restrictions 
typically. That is sadly the story of the struggle of people 
from the beginning of time until now and probably a good way 
into the future, but we can do something about that.
    And if you connect the dots, you recognize that it is the 
same communities that suffer from lack of access to healthcare, 
to environmental justice, to racial justice at the hands of 
police, to economic opportunity, and now to abortion care, are 
communities that lack political power. And it is no accident 
that in Texas, not only are we seeing these restrictions on 
abortion care, but we are seeing restrictions in the form of 
extreme partisan gerrymandering that has been undertaken by 
Republicans in that state, voter suppression efforts which are 
designed to diminish the voices of certain communities. So this 
is all connected, and we have to acknowledge that, be candid 
about it, and find out ways to fight back against that agenda.
    We talk about choice, but there is an asymmetry here 
because I have heard my colleagues on the other side talk about 
how a choice was made to take a child to term to have a baby. 
For my colleagues on the other side, choice is OK as long as 
the choice is one that they agree you should make, but if you 
make a different choice, the agenda is to restrict that, limit 
that, ban that choice. Choice is about agency. It is about a 
voice. It is about justice. It is about power. It is about 
mutual respect.
    So, Ms. Ross, I would like to come back to you because your 
comments have been the most direct, I think the most powerful 
on that topic of power, agency, respect. And I would like you 
to just comment on that one more time in the context of this 
idea of a woman's right to choose.
    Ms. Ross. For me, I like the fact that we are now bringing 
attention to the overlooked power of women to make the choices 
that make sense for them and their families, because that is 
what people like to overlook, that we are not just talking 
about people capable of becoming pregnant as if we are vessels. 
We are citizens, human beings with full human rights, and there 
are people who are dedicated to thinking that we become less 
human, or less citizen, or less capable of thinking clearly 
when we become pregnant. But every one of these people came 
from a mother who was able to think and was able to actually, 
you know, have her rights protected, and if she didn't have her 
rights protected, they should have been.
    So I am fighting for myself, but I am fighting for my 
family, my children, my grandchild, and everybody else because 
we are not going to be subhuman citizens just because somebody 
thinks that they have the right to tell me what I should do in 
my bedroom and with my family in a way that doesn't have my 
family's best interests in mind.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. 
Mr. Keller is back. OK. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. 
Keller, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chair. Today's hearing, it is 
not about healthcare and it is not about protecting women or 
their children. Today's hearing is about weaponizing a radical 
pro-abortion agenda against states that seek to protect women 
and the unborn. When two healthy people enter a doctor's office 
and only one comes out, that is not healthcare.
    When Roe v. Wade was decided, the scientific consensus was 
that a baby had to be 24 weeks old to experience pain. However, 
we know that this is not true, that babies can feel pain as 
early as 12 weeks. Unfortunately, this is why the U.S. is only 
one of the very few countries that allow elective abortion past 
20 weeks, after life begins. Dr. Skop, modern-day science and 
research have changed our knowledge on the true point of 
viability. Do you believe the laws surrounding viability should 
be updated as well?
    Dr. Skop. Absolutely. I think we need to acknowledge the 
science that we have experienced since Roe and amend our 
abortion legislation accordingly.
    Mr. Keller. OK. Thank you. And also we have heard in 
today's hearing that abortions have gotten safer over the 
years. I can't imagine how that is possible when the baby 
doesn't come out of the procedure. But when we are talking 
about the procedure having gotten safer over the years, is that 
true that it has gotten safer for the mother?
    Dr. Skop. It has gotten safer. Along the way, our surgical 
skills have improved. Our anesthetic skills have improved, 
antibiotics. We just have evidence-based medicine that is more 
advanced than it was back at the time of Roe. But it should be 
noted that although it is commonly stated 5 to 10,000 women 
died from septic abortions yearly before Roe, that number is 
not reflected in any of the medical literature at that time. 
The American Medical Association and the CDC document 1 or a 
couple hundred deaths, which is still way too many, but it was 
not as dangerous even prior to Roe, but that was just used as a 
talking point in order to get the procedure legalized.
    Mr. Keller. Can you explain if there are any physical risks 
associated with chemical abortions?
    Dr. Skop. The biggest immediate risk is not passing the 
tissue completely, having a hemorrhage, requiring a surgery. 
There was a large study, a Chinese study, I believe, that 
looked at women who had medical abortions who failed, who 
needed surgery. And in that small group, they found a 361-
percent increased risk of pre-term birth in a subsequent 
pregnancy. So the worst scenario is to do both, to have a 
medical abortion that fails and then to have surgery as well. 
Additionally, rat studies have shown us that, independent of 
what the rat thinks about the abortion, mifepristone increases 
the rat behaviors that are reflective of anxiety and 
depression. Many of the deaths that have occurred after 
mifepristone have been from an unusual type of sepsis from an 
organism called clostridium sordellii. Both misoprostol and 
mifepristone impair the immune system of a woman and so put 
them at higher risk of infections.
    Mr. Keller. Just if I can just ask another question. On top 
of the serious physical risks associated with medical 
abortions, we know that the process is long and can be 
emotionally traumatizing for expecting mothers. Can you speak 
on the emotional impact this process can have on mothers?
    Dr. Skop. Sure. One thing that is not really discussed is 
that an eight-week fetus is about the size and shape of a gummy 
bear. It is clearly human. You can see arms, you can see legs, 
and you can see a head, and women are passing those in their 
toilet, and they are seeing their unborn baby. So they are not 
going to tell anybody that they saw that, but can you imagine 
the emotional trauma of seeing your own child?
    Mr. Keller. I can't imagine that. I think it is clear now 
more than ever that every life is precious and worth 
protecting. I would just urge my colleagues to stand for life. 
Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlelady from Illinois, Ms. Kelly, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you Madam Chair, and I want to thank the 
witnesses for their powerful testimony today. I have been on 
this hearing from the beginning, and it is just interesting 
some of the stuff I have heard. One thing is the conversation 
about how the witness has been treated. I have been on this 
committee for nine years, and I have seen horrendous treatment 
of Democratic witnesses. I don't know the person that said 
that, if the people saying it are very new, but there has been 
horrendous treatment, and I do agree that witnesses should be 
treated with respect. Also, when we talk about science and 
scientific advancement, we use it as it is convenient because 
if we want to talk about climate change and vaccinations, we 
don't talk about what the science is saying.
    So along with a draconian state law, like S.B. 8 in Texas, 
harmful Federal restrictions on abortion coverage have left too 
many individuals without equal access to abortion care. Under 
current law, nearly 29 million women covered by Federal health 
insurance plans who are treated by Federal providers lack 
insurance coverage for abortion services. This includes the 
almost 14 million low-income women who access healthcare 
through Medicaid, half of whom are women of color. Professor 
Ross, how do Federal abortion coverage restrictions 
disproportionately harm people with less income and communities 
of color? And thank you for being honest and straightforward 
and speaking truth to power.
    Ms. Ross. Well, thank you for your question. I was 
fortunate enough to be in Washington, DC. in 1970 when I needed 
an abortion as a student at Howard University, and Washington, 
DC. legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade. 
So I was able to go to the Washington Hospital Center and have 
a perfectly safe late-term abortion, by the way, because my 
mother refused to sign the permission slip for many, many 
months. But then three years later, Roe was passed, and then a 
few years later the Hyde Amendment passed, which restricts the 
use of Federal funds for abortion services for people whose 
healthcare is provided by the Federal Government. And that is 
women in the military, women who get their services through the 
Indian Health Services, poor women, and all of those things.
    So ever since the Hyde Amendment was enacted, people whose 
healthcare was provided by the Federal Government have been 
treated as second-class citizens.
    Ms. Kelly. Right.
    Ms. Ross. And they are discriminated against because of how 
their healthcare is provided, not their medical conditions, but 
because they are either serving our country in the military, on 
a reservation where they have to use the IHS, or poor women, or 
in the Peace Corps and those kinds of things.
    Ms. Kelly. Right.
    Ms. Ross. And so it should be a constitutional violation to 
set up second-class citizenship for people simply through a 
regulation called the Hyde Amendment. And this is something 
that we as black women have been fighting since it was 
proposed, since it was enacted.
    Ms. Kelly. Right.
    Ms. Ross. And the All Above All Campaign is fighting to 
remove that Hyde Amendment because----
    Ms. Kelly. Well----
    Ms. Ross [continuing]. We really, really should not have it 
legal to set up a class of people as second-class citizens.
    Ms. Kelly. Well, that is why I am proud to co-sponsor the 
EACH Act----
    Ms. Ross. Right.
    Ms. Kelly [continuing]. A bill that would reverse the Hyde 
Amendment and other related Federal abortion coverage 
restrictions for good. Ms. Aziz, how would the EACH Act impact 
the communities that Texas Equal Access Fund serves?
    Ms. Aziz. Thank you for your question, but I would like to 
say I think it is a question better answered by a legal expert 
that we are fortunate to have on this panel, if that is OK.
    Ms. Kelly. Sure. Ms. Murray, you can answer.
    Ms. Murray. It is my understanding that the Texas law would 
provide a cause of action against any individual who aids and 
abets someone in performing an abortion or seeking an abortion, 
and it is written incredibly broadly. So as I have said in 
media reports, this could mean that the barista who overhears 
you speaking about your abortion could take a cause of action 
and file suit against you. It also means that anyone who 
provides aid through these abortion funds or even donates to 
Planned Parenthood anywhere in the country could ostensibly be 
a defendant in a lawsuit because, again, the law is so broadly 
written, and that is purposeful to dismantle that network of 
support for pregnant persons.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you. I wish to submit two documents into 
the record representing indisputable evidence that abortion is 
safe, common, and an essential component of healthcare. The 
first is the amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court 
in the case of Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Dobbs by 
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on 
behalf of 25 medical organizations demonstrating the concrete 
medical consensus of opposition to abortion restrictions. The 
second is a statement from ACOG with more than 62,000 members. 
ACOG is the Nation's authoritative body in the development of 
standards of care for women's health. It is evidence-based 
clinical guidelines developed by experts in the field. And ACOG 
states that ``safe legal abortion is a necessary component of 
comprehensive healthcare, and government-imposed obstacles 
marginalize abortion services from routine clinical care and 
are harmful to people's health and well-being.''
    Let me be clear. Any statement to the contrary in today's 
hearings are not based on science or medical evidence. I yield 
back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlewoman from Michigan, Mrs. Lawrence, is now 
recognized for five minutes. Mrs. Lawrence.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I just want to 
start off my short period of time here to put it simply. Anti-
abortion policies do not stop abortions. What it does is stop 
safe and legal abortions where a woman can go and get an 
abortion safely in a safe medical procedure. Now, let's be 
clear. When we talk about abortions, there has always been 
abortion for a number of reasons, and I would like to preface 
my comments. God blessed me with two pregnancies. I was 
married, I had resources, and I was healthy, and I gave birth 
to two healthy children. But I will never step down from the 
fact that if I were a victim of rape, incest, or if I had to 
look my husband in the eye and say, it is the baby or me, that 
I would have a choice. And the ability for a woman to make a 
decision about the care or the ability to bring a child in this 
world is something I do not feel rests with the government.
    And it is interesting to me when I hear the debate about 
the care and the stress level I heard the witness talk about, 
have you ever examined and looked at the impact of children 
that are born into a situation where there was no care? We know 
that the rate of foster children is growing, children born 
addicted, all of these things that, unfortunately, many people 
who call themselves anti-choice are not pro-life for those who 
are living and walking on earth. I have a question, Ms. Ross, I 
will ask you. How has the ACA helped improve access and health 
outcomes for women?
    Ms. Ross. When I was working at Sister Song, the National 
Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, we were very 
much involved in supporting the passage of the Affordable Care 
Act because it widely expanded healthcare options for the 
American public. And it immediately had an impact of providing 
healthcare for many people who otherwise could not afford it. 
And unfortunately, it took us from the 1930's till now to even 
do that modest healthcare reform, and we still are not through 
because we know that every human being has a human right to 
healthcare, and one of our pathways is going to be to achieve 
universal healthcare.
    And once we do, we will make sure that people who need the 
healthcare, who may be afraid to access it because they don't 
have citizenship papers or who are afraid to reveal to their 
abusers that they need prenatal care, we will cover everybody 
with an expanded universal healthcare system for which the 
Affordable Care Act is on the path to that.
    I am sorry. That is my airline trying to reach me----
    Mrs. Lawrence. OK.
    Ms. Ross [continuing]. To schedule my flight because I am 
here all day. That's all right. But it has been a real benefit 
and a human right that is too long overdue, but we need more, 
and we are not going to stop asking for more.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Ms. Ross. I want the record to 
reflect that approximately 700 women, mostly of color, die each 
year from childbirth-related cases. However, when we bring 
forth maternal mortality bills and laws, I don't see my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle with the same passion 
that they have for women who are dying in childbirth. When we 
talk about programs like SNAP, so once a baby is born, how do 
we feed them and how do we use the Title X family planning 
program that would allow women to have access to medical 
resources to allow them to plan their family so that they can 
give birth at a time where they are mentally, physically, and 
economically ready to care for that child? We hear insults on 
our social network of how we are taking care of people. Well, 
you know what? If we had more family planning--not abortions--
family planning--we could reduce the amount of money that we 
spend in the social network.
    With that, I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back, and the 
vice chair of the committee, Mr. Gomez, Representative Gomez, 
from California, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to also just 
add to what my colleague, Mrs. Lawrence, just said. The 
Republicans, the other side of the aisle, they love to talk 
about life, but they talk about life in what I call the 
bookends of a person's life--their birth and their death--but 
they really don't pay much attention to the life that occurs in 
between. And every single time that they are given an 
opportunity to choose life of how somebody is going to live 
their life, they vote no. When they have an opportunity to 
expand Medicaid, which 50 percent of all births are paid 
through Medicaid, they vote no. And what does that do? Well, it 
has a disproportionate and discriminatory effect on people of 
color, mostly black women who are four times as likely as a 
white woman to die at childbirth, than their white 
counterparts.
    But you know what? They are the party of life, but yet when 
they have an opportunity to choose the life of a black woman, 
to expand Medicaid and postpartum care, they vote no. So their 
hypocrisy that they choose life is astounding at best and 
cynical at worst. If they want to choose life, they should care 
about how that person is living. They should vote to make the 
child tax credit that we helped expand and make it refundable, 
they should vote ``yes'' because then you are lifting 50 
percent of the children out of poverty. We should choose life, 
not just at the bookends, but in between, and this is what the 
Republicans have always done. When you are born, after that, 
you are on your own. You know, pull yourself up by the 
bootstraps even though you might not even have baby shoes or 
boots to pull yourself up by, and that is if your mother 
survived the birth. So I find it always offensive when they 
talk about that.
    So let's go on to S.B. 8, and we know that S.B. 8 is not 
the only way the Texas state government has sought to undermine 
abortion access. Long before S.B. 8, Texas and many other 
states deployed targeted restrictions on providers, or trap 
laws, to curtail access. Dr. Moayedi, how have these trap laws 
affected your ability to deliver abortion care?
    Dr. Moayedi. As I have stated previously, these trap laws 
affect every single aspect of my care. I did want to speak, if 
it is OK, Representative Gomez, about a conversation that 
happened earlier relating to black maternal mortality that I 
can't let go. That conversation between the good doctor and, I 
believe, Representative Fallon discussed how black maternal 
mortality is a result of genetic factors and poverty. This is 
incredibly disturbing to hear from a physician because we know 
that race is a social construct. It is not genetically coded. 
And to say that genetic factors lead to increased rates of 
black maternal mortality is actually a direct extension of the 
eugenics movement, which the other side seems to be very much 
against but continues to use their talking points.
    Mr. Gomez. Thank you. It is interesting. I always talk 
about the randomness of birth, that God doesn't give one 
population--He doesn't make them smarter. He doesn't make them 
more talented. He doesn't give all the attributes of what it 
means to have a healthy and successful life to one population 
versus another.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes.
    Mr. Gomez. That is within the law of nature to be 
distributed, right? But, for some reason, they believe that 
that is not the case. And if it is randomized, if people all 
have talents and abilities, then why do we see the disparities 
that we actually see?
    Dr. Moayedi. So, for example, the reason that black 
maternal mortality rates are so high in our country are 
directly a result of white supremacist systems in our medical 
institutions. And so if we worked together, all of us, to 
dismantle white supremacy, we would actually be seeing better 
health outcomes for black people, indigenous people, and 
immigrants like the people from my family.
    Mr. Gomez. And that is exactly the point, that all these 
health outcomes that are negative for black women, minorities, 
indigenous people, are a result of policy decisions that have 
been made for generation upon generation. And if we actually 
have different decisions made, we can change the outcomes, not 
because of somebody's genetics, not because of where they live, 
but because of how we make different policy decisions to get 
different results.
    With that, my time is up, and I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back, and I now 
recognize the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer, who is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to begin by 
asking unanimous consent to submit for the record a few 
letters. The first letter is from the Students for Life Action 
expressing----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Comer [continuing]. Support for life.
    Mr. Comer. Second, Madam Chair, I would like to submit to 
the record all of the letters that we have sent to you 
requesting hearings on various topics that Republicans on the 
Oversight Committee feel are of the utmost importance. And 
last, Madam Chair, I would like to submit to the record all 
these letters that Republicans on the Oversight Committee have 
sent to the Biden Administration requesting information, none 
of which have been responded from the Administration. And, 
again, that is the role of this committee to provide oversight 
for the executive branch.
    So without objection, Madam Chair, I ask for unanimous 
consent to submit them to the record.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Comer. And, Dr. Skop, thank you so much for being here 
today. Let me apologize for how some on the other side of the 
aisle, particularly the men on the other side of the aisle, a 
few of the men have treated you during this hearing. I would 
like to remind everyone that you are an OB/GYN. You are not an 
attorney. You are not an expert on amicus briefs or any of the 
other questioning that they were asking you. I would like to 
give you my time to respond to anything that you feel hasn't 
been adequately addressed or any information that you perhaps 
disagreed with that was stated by anyone else in this hearing. 
And with that, I will turn it over to you.
    Dr. Skop. There are two statements I want to make. One was 
this recent discussion that, maybe I misunderstood, but I think 
were you trying to say that there are not genetic differences 
amongst different ethnic groups? Because I think the CDC would 
probably beg to differ because there are quite easy-to-locate 
evidence that there are some groups that have higher incidence 
of obesity, some that have higher incidence of diabetes, some 
that have higher incidence of hypertension. And are you saying 
you don't think that that is the case? I mean, that is just not 
very scientific.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes, ma'am. Race is not genetically coded in 
the way that you are saying, and all of those are conditions of 
white supremacy, not of someone's inferior genetic capacity.
    Dr. Skop. Oh. OK. OK. I mean, I thought we were here to 
discuss science instead of just preferences.
    Dr. Moayedi. That is very much built into science.
    Mr. Comer. White supremacy comes up a lot in this hearing, 
yes.
    Dr. Skop. Yes, I would actually----
    Mr. Comer. In this committee.
    Dr. Skop. Maybe if you have time to talk afterwards, I 
would love to hear how that works because I just haven't----
    Mr. Comer. It is climate change and everything around here 
but go ahead.
    Dr. Skop. Now, I think I might have forgotten the other 
thought I had, but I appreciate it. You guys have given me a 
lot of opportunity to talk today and thank you for hearing me.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. And I just 
want to really say that everyone has given incredible testimony 
today, and I need to read something in. There is still someone? 
No, this hearing has been going on. It is three. We still 
haven't heard from everyone?
    And the gentlelady from Massachusetts is a leader on this 
issue in the Women's Caucus and on this committee. Ms. 
Pressley, you are now recognized.
    Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time. Thank you. You know, for 
our most marginalized communities, the right to abortion 
guaranteed by Roe v. Wade has really only been a right in name 
only. Abortion bans, including coverage bans like the Hyde 
Amendment, keep abortion out of reach for millions, 
particularly low-income, black, indigenous, and communities of 
color who already face systemic barriers to healthcare. 
Professor Ross, I will afford you the opportunity to elaborate 
on the roots and the impacts of white supremacy and how 
abortion bans like this are rooted in patriarchy, white 
supremacy, and perpetuate systemic racism. Could you speak to 
that? Can you briefly explain the ways in which abortion bans 
and restrictions are rooted in patriarchy, white supremacy, and 
perpetuate systemic racism?
    [No response.]
    Ms. Pressley. OK.
    Ms. Ross. Is that----
    Ms. Pressley. OK.
    Ms. Ross. I don't know if that is directed toward me, so.
    Ms. Pressley. OK. Actually, you know what? Since you 
started with that, Dr. Moayedi, will you pick up on that?
    Dr. Moayedi. Sure, and I would love to hear from Professor 
Ross on that, too. But, I mean, yes, from the founding of this 
country, reproductive coercion was used as a method of 
controlling enslaved women and creating more people to be 
enslaved. Children were separated from Indian families and sent 
to Indian boarding schools as a method of genocide and control 
over those families, and that history continues today. We see 
that history time and time again in how our medical structures 
are created and how we actually think about race and medicine, 
how we actually have physicians that think that high blood 
pressure is because of your race and not because of the stress 
of racism in our country.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you very much. Ms. Aziz, in your 
capacity with the Texas Equal Access Fund, you are on the front 
lines in the fight to ensure abortion access for all. We know 
that there are some common financial challenges that your 
clients face as they attempt to access abortion care, including 
childcare, transportation, housing, people being forced to 
travel out of state. Can you speak to how the Hyde Amendment 
pushes those already out of reach further out of reach when it 
comes to access? Speak to the racist and discriminatory 
implement implications of it, please.
    Ms. Aziz. Thank you for your question. So absolutely. I 
mean, the Hyde Amendment is in place as a tool to discriminate 
against minorities because people that are wealthy will always 
have access to abortions. You know, even in their case, I think 
their access should be easier because I think abortion should 
be easy to access no matter what, but the wealthy will always 
be able to access abortion because they can hop on a flight. 
They can take time off. They can afford to lose wages if it is, 
you know, for two weeks or so. There are things that people 
that have more money are able to do. However, for minorities, 
for people in rural areas, for minors, for trans folks, for any 
sort of vulnerable community again, you know, I just want to 
remind people that it is not just women that have abortions. 
And when we keep saying ``women,'' we are excluding a lot of 
people from the conversation, so I so just want to bring it 
back to that.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Ms. Aziz. Thank you. And so, 
again, given these cost-prohibitive barriers here and the 
impact of things like the Hyde Amendment, which push care 
further and further out of reach, abortion funds have really 
been standing in the gap of that, but it is long past time that 
Congress eliminate the Hyde Amendment. Earlier this year the 
House made progress in doing just that by passing a historic 
budget without Hyde, but the Senate absolutely needs to follow 
suit, and this moment really demands it. Dr. Moayedi, the 
impact of these abortion bans are not limited to those residing 
in the states where they are in effect. As a provider who is on 
the ground, can you share how the ripple effects may be 
impacting broader abortion access across the Nation?
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes. Thank you so much for asking that. Just 
this week I was in Oklahoma City providing care not only for 
people in Oklahoma, but for people from as far as San Antonio, 
Texas. That is over eight hours to drive for care. Ordinarily, 
when I provide care in Oklahoma City, maybe 7 to 10 percent of 
the people in our clinic are from Texas, and specifically the 
North Texas area. This week, over 70 percent of the people I 
took care of were from Texas. That means also that those clinic 
spaces and appointments for people in Oklahoma are moving 
outside of the state as well. I would also like to remind 
people that prior to S.B. 8, Texas was a place where people 
would come for abortion care, too, specifically from Louisiana, 
and so that is pushing that care from Louisiana outside of 
Texas as well.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. 
Without objection, Ms. Shrier is authorized to participate in 
today's hearing, and she is now recognized.
    Ms. Shrier. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our 
witnesses. Thank you for allowing me to waive on to the 
committee today. As a mom, and a pediatrician, and a woman, 
this issue is very important to me, and I am really glad that 
we had a couple physicians here today to discuss this critical 
personal and medical matter. And I wanted to just start with a 
little level setting, so a quick ``yes'' or ``no,'' Dr. 
Moayedi. First, thank you for coming today. You are a 
practicing OB/GYN in Texas.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes.
    Ms. Shrier. And a little bit in Oklahoma.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes.
    Ms. Shrier. And, Dr. Moayedi, when you were getting your 
medical degree, I presume you and Dr. Skop both took an oath to 
care for your patients. Is that correct?
    Dr. Moayedi. That is correct.
    Ms. Shrier. And I have just a question regarding the six-
week issue. Dr. Moayedi, in a typical OB/GYN practice that has 
full scope of care, provides prenatal care, how many of those 
patients who are newly pregnant show up before six weeks?
    Dr. Moayedi. In a typical OB/GYN practice that is not a 
clinic providing abortion care, the typical entry into prenatal 
care is at around 14 weeks.
    Ms. Shrier. Oh, and that makes sense because many women 
don't know they are pregnant at the six-week mark. Thank you 
for clarifying that. You know, I would like to talk about my 
perspective on this, again, as a doctor like you who has taken 
an oath to protect my patients, and all three of us, again, 
have taken that oath. Can I just clarify, who is the patient 
that you take an oath to protect?
    Dr. Moayedi. Any patient that seeks care from me.
    Ms. Shrier. The woman.
    Dr. Moayedi. Yes. Yes.
    Ms. Shrier. The person who seeks care from you. I was going 
to ask Dr. Skop the same thing just to clarify that it is the 
woman she is taking care of. And ultimately, in my view, 
abortion exists in many ways to protect women. It is a 
healthcare decision that a woman makes with her doctor. And, 
frankly, if women can be trusted to raise children, teach 
children, doctor children, they can certainly be trusted to 
make, or we can be trusted to make, our own healthcare 
decisions and we certainly deserve the autonomy to make those 
decisions.
    Pregnancy and childbirth, let's make no mistake, present 
really big risks: risks to the woman's health, to her life, to 
her independence, perhaps to her education, her ability to feed 
her other children, to keep a job, to make ends meet, and, 
frankly, even sadly, safety from abuse from a partner or a 
parent. And as a doctor, I am horrified by this new law in 
Texas and others like it which essentially ban abortions, but 
this one also creates a system of modern-day bounty hunters--
neighbors, ex-boyfriends, anybody with a grudge--to enforce 
state law and profit from it to the tune of $10,000 or more 
each. And these laws undermine the oath that we take to our 
patients and that trust, and it criminalizes doctors in the 
process. And, you know, these are politicians invading the exam 
room and telling doctors how to do our jobs, and, frankly, 
encouraging us, making us violate an oath that we have taken.
    Finally, I just wanted to mention, let's not kid ourselves. 
Abortion will continue, but with laws like these, it will not 
be safe and it will not be legal. And make no mistake. This 
puts women's lives at risk just like 50 years ago when women 
would die from this, and it takes away women's freedom to chart 
the course of their lives, which we all deserve to have. So as 
the only pro-choice woman doctor in Congress, I just want you 
to know that I will always stand with women against draconian, 
non-medically justified barriers to women's access to abortion, 
and I sure hope that others like you will as well.
    Dr. Moayedi. Thank you.
    Ms. Shrier. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. and without 
objection, Ms. Escobar is authorized to participate in this 
hearing. Congresswoman Escobar, you are now recognized.
    Ms. Escobar. Chairwoman Maloney, thank you so much for the 
privilege of waiving on to your committee. I am so grateful to 
be here today. I also want to express my deepest gratitude to 
our witnesses, especially those who have hung through the 
entire hearing, a very lengthy hearing with so much to discuss.
    Madam Chair, I ask for unanimous consent to enter into the 
record a number of statements from Texas women, from providers, 
from nonprofits and organizations, who will be impacted by this 
draconian law.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection. And thank you for 
submitting them.
    Ms. Escobar. Thank you, Madam Chair. I represent El Paso, 
Texas, a community on the safe and secure, beautiful U.S.-
Mexico border, and I want to say a couple things about the 
state that I live in and where we live in. In Texas, the very 
Republicans who have pushed this draconian piece of legislation 
have the audacity to call themselves pro-life. However, their 
actions don't connote any respect or reverence for life 
whatsoever. In Texas, we have an unacceptably high maternal 
morbidity rate. Absolutely unacceptable. And Republicans who 
have been in charge of the state legislature have been sitting 
on their hands as pregnant women continue to die.
    Texas children live in generational inequity and poverty 
because in Texas, the level of education a child gets depends 
on the zip code that they live in. And we live in a state that 
not only limits children's access to healthcare and their 
families' access to healthcare, but we live in a state that is 
trying to eliminate access to healthcare altogether through its 
lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act. We live in a state 
with a Governor who prohibits mask mandates in Texas schools in 
order to protect the lives of Texas children. We live in a 
state with Republican leadership that was essentially silent as 
the prior Administration separated children from their parents 
under some of the most heinous anti-immigrant policies that we 
have ever seen in our generation. We live in a state where 
Republicans oppose access to sex education and contraception in 
order to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
    So the problem is not just Texas Republicans. Here in 
Congress, the same Republicans who support S.B. 8 and this 
draconian legislation unanimously, and frequently, and 
repeatedly oppose pro-child, pro-family legislation, such as 
the child tax credit, access to childcare, access to housing, 
and a number of other Democratic-led policies that help enrich 
and save and create healthy families. They oppose these 
policies. This is not what I would call pro-life. We should not 
allow them to get away with calling themselves pro-life. Pro-
birth maybe in some cases, but certainly not pro-life.
    Dr. Moayedi, we know that these draconian laws do not end 
abortion. In fact, we heard earlier, the first panel, we heard 
from my colleague, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who talked about 
what she had to do in order to have access to a choice that she 
was forced to make, a very personal choice that she had to 
disclose here in front of all of Congress and in front of the 
American public. But she also talked about the way women, her 
peers, were dying because they could not have access to safe, 
legal abortions. Can you tell me, as Republicans seek to turn 
back the clock by decades on women and women's access to care, 
what will it do to women who will take their reproductive 
healthcare into their own hands?
    Dr. Moayedi. Thank you for that question. I trained in El 
Paso for four years, and my child was born there as well. So 
thankfully today at least, we have safe medications that people 
can access. Mifepristone, misoprostol can be safely taken and 
you don't need a physician to take them. And so the concern 
with laws that criminalize or illegalize abortion today is not 
so much around the safety because some people will be able to 
access safe medications, but around what happens to people that 
do access those medicines. We know already that black and brown 
bodies are over-criminalized and over-policed in this country, 
and we know that people that seek those medications when they 
are illegal or not legally available are going to suffer the 
consequences through the criminal legal system.
    I do want to tell a story, though. About two years ago, 
three, in our last legislative session in Texas, a bill was 
introduced that would make providing abortion care a felony and 
give the physician and the patient, the person seeking an 
abortion, the death penalty. Now, that bill didn't make it very 
far, but that very week that it was being discussed, a patient 
came and saw me and said, Doc, I know that I am going to get 
the death penalty for this, but I need this abortion.
    You know, I provide this care and I am trusted by my 
neighbors to provide this care to them, and I do it out of a 
duty to care for my neighbors. But that really as a mom hit me 
very hard that people, you know, might be confused about what 
the law is, but still want to come in for that care no matter 
the consequences. And I think it is important to understand 
that abortion and birth, they are not separate. They are part 
of a continuum, and as long people have had birth, they have 
had abortions, and we are not going to end them through laws.
    Ms. Escobar. Thank you both for your leadership. Madam 
Chair, I am out of time. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Your time has expired. And in closing, 
I want to thank all of the panelists for their incredible 
remarks and insights, and I want to commend my colleagues for 
participating in this important conversation. Votes have been 
called, so we will be adjourning. But before we adjourn, I want 
to quickly take care of a one piece of administrative business.
    At the request of the ranking member, Ms. Mace will now 
serve as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights 
and Civil Liberties.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    With that and without objection, all members will have five 
legislative days within which to submit extraneous materials 
and to submit additional written questions for the witnesses to 
the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their 
response. I ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as 
they are able.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And with that, this important hearing 
is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:14 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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