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






 



 
                   THE IMPACT OF THE SUPREME COURT'S
                   
                   DOBBS DECISION ON ABORTION RIGHTS

                  AND ACCESS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                          OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             JULY 13, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-91

                               __________

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



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


             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
48-120PDF           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                Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California                Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California             Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio               Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Pat Fallon, Texas
    Georgia                          Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California            Mike Flood, Nebraska
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts

                      Russ Anello, Staff Director
                    Ben Smith, Chief Health Counsel,
                    Amy Stratton, Deputy Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

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

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on July 13, 2022....................................     1

                               Witnesses

Fatima Goss Graves, President and Chief Executive Officer, 
  National Women's Law Center
    Oral Statement...............................................     5

Mallory McMorrow, State Senator, Michigan State Senate
    Oral Statement...............................................     6

Renitta Shannon, State Representative, Georgia House of 
  Representatives
    Oral Statement...............................................     7

Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Chancellor's Professor of Law, 
  University of California, Irvine
    Oral Statement...............................................     9

Erin Morrow Hawley, Senior Counsel, Alliance Defending Freedom
    Oral Statement...............................................    11

Sarah Lopez, Abortion Storyteller, We Testify, Youth Program 
  Manager, Jane's Due Process
    Oral Statement...............................................    12


 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

                              ----------                              

  * Letter from Wisconsin Family Action; submitted by Rep. 
  Grothman.

  * Article from Detroit Free Press, ``Protesters descend on 
  Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's home after dark;'' 
  submitted by Rep. Tlaib.

  * Article from the Seattle Times, ``Man suspected of hate crime 
  for allegedly threatening to kill U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal;'' 
  submitted by Rep. Tlaib.

  * Letter from Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life America; submitted by 
  Rep. Keller.

  * Findings from The Turnaway Study; submitted by Rep. Porter.

  * Article from Fox News, ``Red states with abortion bans could 
  `lose economic edge,' warns New York Times;'' submitted by Rep. 
  Biggs.

  * Article from Fox News, ``71% of Americans support abortion 
  restrictions: poll;'' submitted by Rep. Clyde.

  * National Women's Law Center Annual Report FY 2015-2016; 
  submitted by Rep. Clyde.

  * Letter from NARAL; submitted by Chairwoman Maloney.

  * Letter from Pro-Choice America; submitted by Chairwoman 
  Maloney.

  * Letter from Physicians for Reproductive Health; submitted by 
  Chairwoman Maloney.

  * Letter from American Academy of Family Physicians; submitted 
  by Chairwoman Maloney.

  * Letter from Professor Carrie Baker of Smith College; 
  submitted by Chairwoman Maloney.

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


                   THE IMPACT OF THE SUPREME COURT'S

                   DOBBS DECISION ON ABORTION RIGHTS

                  AND ACCESS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES

                              ----------                              


                        Wednesday, July 13, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                 Committee on Oversight and Reform,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m., in 
room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building and over Zoom, 
Hon. Carolyn Maloney [chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Lynch, Connolly, 
Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Khanna, Mfume, Tlaib, Porter, Bush, 
Brown, Davis, Wasserman Schultz, Welch, Johnson, Sarbanes, 
Speier, Kelly, Lawrence, DeSaulnier, Gomez, Pressley, Comer, 
Jordan, Foxx, Hice, Grothman, Cloud, Higgins, Norman, Keller, 
Biggs, Donalds, Mace, LaTurner, Clyde, and Franklin.
    Chairwoman Maloney. 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.
    We are holding today's hearing at a moment when women 
across America are feeling sorrow, anger, and disbelief. 
Nineteen days ago, a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court 
fulfilled the Republican Party's decades-long goal of 
overturning Roe v. Wade, and stripped away a constitutional 
right relied on by generations of American women. The goal of 
these right-wing extremists is clear: to control the bodies of 
women, girls, and any person who can become pregnant. To be 
even more clear, the Dobbs decision means the government can 
now order people to stay pregnant on pain of criminal 
punishment. Many of us have been warning about this day for 
years as states have steadily chipped away at the right to 
abortion.
    In 2019, my first hearing as chair of this committee, we 
examined how draconian restrictions in states like Missouri, 
were closing down abortion providers. Last year, we held a 
hearing on the six-week abortion ban in Texas, which turns 
private citizens into bounty hunters, encouraging them to sue 
anyone they suspect of helping someone in need of an abortion. 
Now the Supreme Court has bulldozed straight through our rights 
with this extreme, dangerous, and undemocratic decision. We are 
already seeing the disastrous effects of this decision as 
states begin criminalizing abortion. Abortion is now illegal in 
16 states and anti-abortion legislators in other states are 
rushing to follow suit, threatening to make abortion 
inaccessible for an estimated 33 million women across the 
country. Doctors and patients in these states are afraid and 
confused about what this radical decision means for providing 
and receiving critical healthcare. Women are worried about 
having miscarriages or pregnancy complications for fear they 
may be investigated or prosecuted for getting the care they 
desperately need.
    Of course, abortion is still legal in many states, 
including my home state of New York, thanks to Democrats 
fighting for women's rights. But for people who can't afford to 
take time off of work and pay for childcare and travel 
expenses, going to another state to receive abortion care is 
simply not an option. We know that abortion bans and 
restrictions will disproportionately harm people of color, 
people with low incomes, young people, LGBTQI+ individuals, and 
undocumented people and so many mores.
    Today, we are going to hear about the terrible consequences 
of restricting and criminalizing abortion. We will hear from 
those who are personally impacted and from state legislators 
who are on the front lines of defending access to abortion. 
Today's hearing is especially important because Republicans are 
not going to stop with Dobbs. They are openly planning to 
impose a national ban on abortion. The damage that would cause 
is inconceivable. As we hear about the impact of the loss of 
abortion rights today, I would like to ask those watching our 
hearing, a simple question. Is this the country we want for our 
children? Do we want a country where our children have fewer 
rights than we did, or do we want to live in a country that 
respects and trusts women to make the best choices for 
themselves and their families?
    The answer is clear. Americans overwhelmingly support the 
right to an abortion. Democrats in Congress, we hear you. We 
stand with you and we are fighting for you. The House has 
already passed the Women's Health Protection Act, which would 
establish a statutory right to abortion, and this week, we will 
pass an updated version that directly responds to Dobbs. Next, 
the Senate must act, and we should not let filibuster rules 
stand in the way. We also need to expand access to medication 
abortion. Congresswoman Pressley and I have worked with the 
Biden administration to eliminate barriers to the safe, FDA-
approved method of ending an early pregnancy. I have also 
introduced legislation to crack down on anti-abortion 
disinformation and to protect access to contraception at the 
pharmacy counter. President Biden signed an executive order 
last week to protect and expand access to abortion and all 
reproductive healthcare, and we stand ready to support his 
efforts.
    Democrats are committed to restoring abortion rights and 
access that the right-wing Supreme Court has taken away, and we 
will never stop fighting until it is restored.
    I now yield to Ranking Member Comer.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. We are having a hearing 
today on a Supreme Court decision, a decision that came at the 
end of a legal process. To be clear, the Dobbs decision did not 
outlaw abortion. Instead, it returned the issue to the states 
for the people to decide. Yet Democrats charge the Supreme 
Court as somehow destroying our democracy by strengthening our 
democratic process. They have spent the last two months 
attacking the legitimacy of the Court, even seeking to 
intimidate through thinly veiled threats of violence, all 
because the left did not get what they want.
    We have a video and I would ask that we play the video now, 
please.
    [Video shown.]
    Mr. Comer. In today's hearing, Democrats will fearmonger, 
following the advice of their allies in the media and jumping 
on the bandwagon. The New York Times posts a piece saying that 
Democrats, ``need to learn lean into the air and the politics 
of fear,'' when it comes to abortion. To the mainstream media, 
the politics of fear includes ignoring violence against those 
who oppose their preferred policies. Just a few weeks ago, a 
man traveled across the country to try to assassinate a sitting 
Supreme Court Justice. The mainstream media buried the news 
because doing so would somehow show their support for Justice 
Kavanaugh or even the Supreme Court.
    Today's hearing continues the pattern set by Democrats 
throughout this entire Congress. In hearing after hearing, they 
have sought to draw attention away from the failures of the 
Biden administration, failures that have led to skyrocketing 
inflation, record high gas prices, a frightening shortage of 
baby formula, and the worst border crisis in the history of 
America. While Democrats refuse to conduct any meaningful 
oversight, President Biden has put us on a path to destroy 
America. Unfortunately, Democrats are following suit by seeking 
to destroy our democratic institutions. They are beholden to 
the radical left, who even the Biden administration admits is 
out of touch. They have no respect for process even though our 
republic relies on process to survive.
    When process is respected, it strengthens our institutions 
and encourages responsible civic action through the legislative 
process. When the process is respected, the rule of law is 
upheld. And thankfully, the Supreme Court respected process. 
The Constitution begins with, ``We the People of the United 
States,'' not ``We the government'' or ``We the nine Justices 
of the Supreme Court.'' And to see the Supreme Court restrain 
its own powers and return authority to the states and the 
people should be inspiring. Meanwhile, the American people 
entrusted Congress to restrain the powers of the executive 
branch, and toward that end, the Congress and our committee has 
failed. As our country struggles under the weight of inflation, 
skyrocketing energy crisis, and a broken southern border, we 
have sat idly by holding hearings that offer the American 
people zero solutions. This committee needs to do better. We 
must do better. Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Before I introduce our witnesses, I 
would like to briefly respond to the ranking member. Democrats 
strongly reject any use of harassment, threats, or violence. 
That's why Congress has taken action to protect members of the 
Supreme Court. That's why we have urged Republicans to join us 
in condemning the violent attack on the Capitol last year. What 
we do support is Americans' ability to peacefully stand up for 
their rights. I believe there is no democracy if women cannot 
make decisions about their own healthcare, including 
reproductive rights. And we will continue to fight for 
Americans and their rights, and we will never give up.
    I would now like to introduce our witnesses that we have 
today. First, we will hear from Fatima Goss Graves, President 
and Chief Executive Officer of the National Women's Law Center. 
I now recognize Representative Lawrence to briefly introduce 
our next witness.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Good morning, and thank you, Madam Chair. I 
have the pleasure of introducing our own Michigan-owned State 
Senator Mallory McMorrow. She represents Metro Detroit. She is 
serving her first term in the Michigan Senate for the 13th 
State Senate District. She is an impassioned fighter for the 
people of Michigan, for families, and for reproductive health. 
Her voice speaks volumes, and I look forward to hearing from 
her today.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I now recognize Representative Johnson 
briefly to introduce our next witness. Representative Johnson?
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair. This morning, I am 
pleased to introduce state Representative Renitta Shannon, who 
is a representative in the Georgia House of Representatives 
since 2017, where she has represented the 84th District, which 
includes part of the 4th congressional District, which I 
represent. Representative Shannon is the former Executive Vice 
President of the Georgia State Chapter of the National 
Organization for Women, and has long been a champion in the 
fight for economic justice, racial and gender equality, and 
reproductive freedom. She has sponsored legislation aiming to 
defend anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. She has 
successfully led the effort to expand postpartum Medicaid 
coverage from 6 to 12 months, and has fought repeatedly against 
restrictions to abortions in Georgia, sharing her own abortion 
story in the process.
    In light of the recent Supreme Court decision, we need 
people to speak out about what we all know is right. And, State 
Representative Shannon, we welcome you to Congress to use your 
voice once again and hold those who strive to take away bodily 
autonomy accountable. Thank you for your testimony today, and I 
yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Then we will hear from Professor 
Michele Goodwin, the Chancellor's Professor of Law at the 
University of California, Irvine. Please note that Professor 
Goodwin has a hard stop at 11, at which time she will be 
excused. Then we will hear from Erin Morrow Hawley, Senior 
Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. Finally, we will 
hear from Sarah Lopez, abortion storyteller at We Testify and 
Youth Program Manager at Jane's Due Process.
    The witnesses will be unmuted so we can swear them in. 
Please raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm that the testimony 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.
    Without objection your written statements will be made part 
of this record.
    With that, Ms. Graves, you are now recognized for your 
testimony.

 STATEMENT OF FATIMA GOSS GRAVES, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL 
                       WOMEN'S LAW CENTER

    Ms. Goss Graves. Chairman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, 
and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to 
testify today. My name is Fatima Goss Graves, and I am 
President and CEO at the National Women's Law Center, and I am 
here today because in a single day, millions lost a right and a 
right they had for nearly 50 years that had been fundamental to 
our health, and our life, and our future, and to this society.
    The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health 
Organization has already proven to be catastrophic. Within two 
weeks, 14 states were already without abortion care, now more. 
And people are now told they will be forced to stay pregnant, 
they will be forced to give birth, and they even are now being 
told they cannot leave their state. And we got here in a 
dizzying fashion. A mix of extreme lawmakers raced to pass more 
and more outrageous laws banning abortion, sowing fear and 
division in their communities along the way. And then they 
escalated those tactics after they saw President Trump's 
promise that he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who 
would automatically ban abortion and overturn Roe.
    And so more than two weeks ago, we watched with horror as 
the court's majority put their personal opinions above 
longstanding rule of law, science, and people's basic needs. I 
cannot overstate how much legal uncertainty and chaos that this 
Supreme Court has unleashed with this unsound opinion. Our 
laws, and our systems, and our expectations in this country 
have been built around the idea that abortion is legal. And now 
without that bedrock, we face a mine full of vague, and 
evolving, and even sometimes conflicting state laws.
    Employers, and schools, and city governments, they are all 
buried under the weight of this explosion. Clinics and 
healthcare professionals, they are trying to make sense of this 
shifting landscape. Patients are confused, and they are scared 
about the rights and they as individuals are forced to navigate 
in an uncertain legal landscape. Many cannot travel, including 
those who can't afford it, or are incarcerated, or may be 
undocumented. And those who are able to travel out of state, 
they are terrified. State lawmakers in Missouri are already 
considering a bounty-hunter-style law to target those who 
travel out of state for abortion care and those who help them. 
And all of these groups are facing fear of prosecution, and 
harassment, and intimidation.
    And so, to the committee members and to anyone who is 
watching today, I am going to say this is not a drill. Our very 
democracy and what it means to be an equal participant in our 
society, in our economy, in our political system, it is on the 
brink of demise. And alongside it, things like free and fair 
elections, interstate travel, freedom to express oneself, 
safety in public places, the right to protest and indeed, yes, 
that fundamental right to privacy, these are principles of our 
democracy, and they are significantly under threat.
    So before closing, I just want to focus not on those who 
unleashed this chaos, but on those who will be most harmed by 
it. Those who are suffering now are more likely to be low 
income. They are more likely to be women of color. They are 
already facing challenges accessing healthcare in their 
community, including other basic forms of healthcare, like 
contraception. They often lack things like job security and 
paid leave, and they may just be going to college or starting a 
new career, or maybe they are trying to leave an abusive 
relationship, or they could have been assaulted. Whatever their 
situation, they understand why they need abortion care, and 
they know what is right for them, and I trust them to make that 
decision.
    Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Senator McMorrow, you are 
now recognized for your testimony.

  STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MALLORY MCMORROW, MICHIGAN STATE 
                            SENATOR

    Ms. McMorrow. Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member, and 
members of the committee, and Congresswoman Lawrence for the 
very kind introduction.
    I would like to start with a story. In 2014, Michal and 
Jordan Nodel were a year into their marriage and elated to be 
expecting their first child. Throughout their pregnancy, Michal 
felt wonderful, as healthy as could be. All of their regular 
checkups showed that everything was on track, but at their 20-
week appointment, everything changed. The doctor came back into 
the room, and the room group grew quiet. The diagnosis was 
severe osteogenesis imperfecta, a form of skeletal dysplasia 
preventing the fetus from developing collagen. Simply put, the 
bones were not developing. Michal and Jordan learned that if 
their future child survived, being carried to term, they would 
likely live a very short life, suffering every moment in great 
pain. The diagnosis was so severe that a sneeze could break a 
rib.
    Her husband, Jordan, told me that he didn't think they were 
in the category of needing an abortion and all of the stigma 
that went along with it. ``We needed emergency medical care.'' 
He said that given their situation, he had no doubt that the 
system would recognize the urgency and get them the care that 
they needed, but he was wrong. The hospital made it difficult 
to schedule appointments. No one seemed to want to call back, 
despite making the heartbreaking and selfless decision to 
terminate their pregnancy, a pregnancy they wanted so badly. In 
the moment when they needed help the most, it felt like nobody 
would help them. Through tireless effort, calling every family 
friend they could think of, they finally found their way to the 
University of Michigan Women's Hospital where a team of experts 
would perform the procedure.
    Michal and Jordan recognized that most don't have the time 
and resources that they do and how lucky they were to know 
people in medicine throughout the state and be able to take 
time off of work. Michal's abortion took place in November. The 
following August she was pregnant. Zoe is now five, and Lior, 
their second daughter, was born 18 months later. Michal and 
Jordan shared their story with me, a story not dissimilar to 
many other women and families facing this decision, because 
without access to the care that they needed, she would not have 
the wonderful family and two healthy daughters she has now. 
Without that abortion, Michal may never have been able to 
conceive again.
    I previously spoke one-on-one with one of my colleagues who 
was in favor of legislation further restricting abortion in our 
state. She listened to their story and asked me how frequently 
a situation like theirs happens. She said to me, ``This feels 
so difficult to legislate because every situation is 
different.'' Honorable Members of Congress, that response is 
exactly right. Every situation is different. Every individual 
and family seeking abortion care does so for different reasons. 
Sometimes birth control fails. Sometimes a family already has 
children and knows that they cannot support anymore. For so 
many others, getting pregnant is hard and staying pregnant, 
safely and healthily, is even harder.
    And with the Dobbs ruling overturning the protections 
previously enshrined in Roe v. Wade, Michigan now has a long 
dormant 1931 law on our books that makes providing abortion a 
felony, with no exception for age, rape, or incest. The way the 
language is written, our attorney general has warned that the 
law could be interpreted to include a self-managed medication 
abortion, meaning that not only would doctors and medical 
professionals be sent to jail, but so, too, would countless 
women and girls.
    I had women reach out to me afraid of even trying to get 
pregnant, knowing they are at higher risk of a complicated 
pregnancy, and devastated to think of what might happen if it 
doesn't go exactly right. I have constituents who tried one 
round of IVF, so deeply wanting to start a family, but not 
knowing if IVF will still be legal in a post-Roe reality, 
terrified that they will never be able to. I have a constituent 
who shared with me that she has already survived an ectopic 
pregnancy because she had access to an abortion, and she asked 
me what if it happens again.
    At this moment, abortion is still legal in Michigan because 
of a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of the 
1931 law. But some of our own colleagues are seeking to 
intervene and overturn the injunction, forcing the 1931 law 
into effect. Every situation is different and make no mistake: 
the impacts on the ground in Michigan are already and will 
continue to be devastating.
    I thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee for 
allowing me to testify here today, and I implore you to 
consider the great harm that this Supreme Court ruling will 
have throughout more than half of states nationwide, and to do 
the necessary work to ensure that every individual has access 
to safe, necessary medical care that they and their doctors 
determine that they need.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Now, Representative Shannon, 
you are now recognized for your testimony.

  STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RENITTA SHANNON, MEMBER, GEORGIA 
                 STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

    Ms. Shannon. Thank you, Honorable Chair Maloney, for 
inviting me to address your committee today on behalf of 
Georgians.
    Twenty years ago, I had an abortion and faced significant 
unnecessary burdens in trying to do so. Sadly, over the last 20 
years, barriers to accessing abortion care have only increased, 
exacerbating an ongoing public health crisis defined by more 
maternal deaths, increasing poverty, and greater inequality 
overall. The Dobbs decision will amount to structural violence 
for many communities, but most egregiously for Black, brown, 
indigenous people of color, and people with disabilities, 
LGBTQ+ people, and people living at the intersection of these 
identities, who have already sustained centuries of oppression 
and lack of access to reproductive freedom.
    Since the inception of America, Black women have been 
battling for our bodily autonomy, resisting rape, forced birth 
during enslavement, and involuntary sterilization into the late 
1970's. Today, accessing abortion in Georgia depends on whether 
or not you have the resources to overcome economic, 
institutional, and legal barriers restricting access to care. 
Per the National Partnership for Women and Families 
organization, Georgia has over 2.5 million women of 
reproductive age, and almost half of them are economically 
insecure.
    Having a child has implications for one's education, 
earnings, and economic security, and is an essential aspect of 
planning for one's future. Each of us is an expert in our 
unique life situations. Once a person decides whether or not to 
carry a pregnancy, regardless of the reason, no one should 
stand in the way of their decision. They should have access to 
quality healthcare with dignity and free from government 
interference or judgment.
    As a lawmaker in Georgia, I have witnessed that many 
barriers exist to accessing reproductive healthcare, and this 
is true whether you are trying to carry a healthy pregnancy or 
access abortion. To be clear, while being known internationally 
to many as being resource rich, the Atlanta Metro Area does not 
reflect the majority of Georgia, which is rural and lacks 
access to many of the resources Atlanta has. Over half of 
Georgia's 159 counties do not have access to an OBGYN. Georgia 
continues to rank highest in maternal mortality, with Black 
women being 3 to 4 times more likely to die than their white 
counterparts.
    Forcing a person to carry an unwanted or medically 
dangerous pregnancy increases the chance of death of the 
pregnant person, increases future infertility, and leads to 
poor health outcomes unnecessarily. To put it bluntly, abortion 
is healthcare as it is commonly necessary used to resolve 
miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and dangerous health 
conditions. But there are many areas of the state where 
pregnant people must travel hours to receive any of this 
emergency care, thereby increasing the chance of maternal 
death. This presents more barriers to accessing care as 
Georgia's infrastructure, in terms of transportation and 
broadband internet, is sorely lacking for today's needs.
    Georgia does not have a robust transit system. It is still 
the case in most of Georgia that if you don't have access to a 
car, you will not be able to access care of any kind. Our lack 
of broadband infrastructure in rural parts of the state make it 
hard for many Georgians to identify providers or attend 
telemedicine appointments. Increasing barriers to affording 
care, Georgia has some of the lowest legal wages in the 
country. Georgia's state minimum wage is effectively a racist 
carveout, allowing agricultural and domestic workers to be 
legally paid $5.25 per hour. These two industries almost 
exclusively employ Black and brown workers. Many Georgians find 
affording basic needs to be very much out of reach.
    To be clear, these challenges in Georgia are solvable, but 
they are the result of years of conservative-led government 
equaling a lack of investments in Georgians. That has led to a 
harsh reality for many. Poor leadership persists because of 
rampant voter suppression, targeting Georgians who are already 
struggling the most. All of these factors have made accessing 
abortion and reproductive healthcare challenging to obtain for 
many.
    Georgia has less than 10 clinics statewide performing 
abortions. Most of the work is being done by independent 
clinics with limited staff and financial resources, not well-
funded large corporations like Planned Parenthood. After Texas 
implemented Senate Bill 8, abortion providers across the region 
say they are struggling to accommodate the surge of out-of-
state patients, as Texas is the Nation's second most populous 
state. Since the Dobbs decision, some clinics have decided to 
close, anticipating that House Bill 481 could go into effect 
any day now and outlaw abortion in Georgia. If abortion is 
outlawed in Georgia, many will not have the resources to get 
care out of state. The ability to access reproductive 
healthcare should not be determined by the state a person lives 
in. Having a patchwork of reproductive freedom across the 
country is detrimental to individuals and families.
    Since the Dobbs decision, providers in Georgia tell me that 
they have seen two patterns emerge. First, they have been 
overwhelmed with calls from out-of-state patients as state by 
states rush to ban abortion. A provider in Alabama referred 100 
patients in one phone call to the Atlanta-based provider I 
spoke with. The second pattern is that the patients are 
terminating earlier and earlier in pregnancy, feeling pressure 
to be decisive before losing access to abortion altogether.
    The latest decision in Dobbs has only exasperated a dire 
lack of access to care. Abortion rights should have never been 
left up to the courts. We must immediately codify complete 
reproductive freedom in law and ensure that everyone can thrive 
with dignity. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. Thank you.
    Professor Goodwin, you are now recognized. Professor 
Goodwin?

 STATEMENT OF MICHELE BRATCHER GOODWIN, CHANCELLOR'S PROFESSOR 
            OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

    Ms. Goodwin. Committee Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member 
Comer, and distinguished members of the House Committee on 
Oversight and Reform, thank you for inviting me to participate 
in today's hearing on ``The Impact of the Supreme Court's Dobbs 
Decision on Abortion Rights and Access Across the United 
States.''
    I join you and fellow witnesses today to explain the dire 
consequences of the current reproductive landscape in the 
United States in light of the Supreme Court's decision in 
Dobbs. And that includes the horrifically high rates of 
maternal mortality and morbidity, chilling racial disparities 
and rates of death associated with pregnancy, the grave 
incidence of punishment against girls and women in anti-
abortion states, and the importance of centering the Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Amendment as pathways forward.
    My name is Michele Goodwin. I am a Chancellor's Professor 
at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Lecturer 
at Harvard Medical School. My comments today will focus on the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment, and my written comments, 
which have been shared, go into greater details across all of 
these areas.
    Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of 
Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. If cotton was 
euphemistically king, then Black women's wealth maximizing 
forced reproduction was Queen. The overturning of Roe v. Wade 
reveals the Supreme Court's neglectful reading of the 
amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people 
equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black 
women from the Constitution.
    Mandated, forced, or compulsory pregnancy actually 
contravene enumerated rights in the Constitution, namely the 
Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against involuntary 
servitude and protection of bodily autonomy, as well as the 
Fourteenth Amendment's defense of privacy and freedom. This 
Supreme Court demonstrates selective and opportunistic 
interpretation of the Constitution and legal history, which 
ignores the intent of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, 
especially as related to Black women's bodily autonomy, 
liberty, and privacy, which extended beyond freeing them from 
labor in cotton fields, to shielding them from rape and forced 
reproduction. The horrors inflicted on Black women during 
slavery, especially sexual violations and forced pregnancies, 
have been all but wiped from cultural and legal memory. But 
they do matter, especially as Justice Alito and those in the 
majority made specific overtures to originalism and textualism.
    Overturning the right to an abortion reveals the Court's 
indefensible disregard for the lives of pregnant patients, 
given the possible side effects and consequences of pregnancy, 
from gestational diabetes to ectopic pregnancies and death. 
State-mandated pregnancy will exacerbate what are already 
alarming health and dignity harms, especially in states with 
horrific records of maternal mortality and morbidity. In many 
of these states, there have been uninterrupted patterns of 
invidious lawmaking and discrimination that harm the interests 
of Black women and children, only countered by necessary 
Federal enactments, review, and protection.
    To understand the gravity of what is at stake, one needs 
only to look at the Supreme Court's own recent history. In 
2016, the Supreme Court noted in Whole Woman's Health v. 
Hellerstedt that women are 14 times more likely to die by 
carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. The 
United States bears the chilling distinction of being the most 
dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth, 
ranking 56th overall in the world. Disproportionately, those 
who will suffer most are poor women, especially Black and brown 
women. Black women are over three times as likely to die by 
carrying a pregnancy to term than their white counterparts, and 
in Mississippi, a Black woman is 118 times more likely to die 
by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. And 
I will repeat that: a Black woman in Mississippi is 118 times 
more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by 
having an abortion in that state. According to the Mississippi 
maternal mortality report, Black women accounted for nearly 80 
percent of pregnancy-related cardiac deaths in that state.
    When we consider the risks that are at hand, and many of 
them have been talked about--criminal punishment, civil 
punishment, the erosion of privacy protections, which Justice 
Thomas calls for in his concurring opinion--one cannot trust 
that when the Supreme Court says that there are guardrails that 
will protect individual's right to contraception, marriage, and 
more, that that will be respected or protected.
    I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today. 
Thank you so very much.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. And, Ms. Hawley, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

 STATEMENT OF ERIN MORROW HAWLEY, ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM, 
                     THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY

    Ms. Hawley. Good morning, Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking 
Member Comer, and members of the committee. I am Erin Hawley, 
senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.
    The Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs corrects a 50-year 
wrong, one that resulted in the death of over 60 million unborn 
children. Roe v. Wade was premised on egregious legal errors, 
and its reversal is a tremendous victory for life and for the 
American people. Roe cheated us of our ability to promote good 
policy, but Dobbs restores our opportunity to reaffirm 
motherhood, and, in so doing, to empower women.
    Roe was terrible constitutional law. It invented, 
fabricated really, a constitutional right from thin air, and 
scholars across the political spectrum believed the case was 
wrongly decided. Roe took from the American people the ability 
to protect unborn life in an exercise of raw judicial power. As 
a result of Roe, the United States has been an extreme outlier 
in abortion law, being one of only a few countries, countries 
like China and North Korea, to allow elective abortion for any 
reason up until the moment before birth. Tragically, Roe was as 
wrong about women as it was about the Constitution. Its seven 
male authors lamented that motherhood ``forced upon women a 
bleak and distressful future,'' but moms across the country 
know that's an inadequate description of what we do and who we 
are. With Dobbs, Americans can begin to undo the damage of that 
devastating lie.
    On behalf of Alliance Defending Freedom, I had the 
privilege of serving as counsel to Mississippi and Dobbs. My 
daughter was about six months old when I was asked to help, and 
it's not easy traveling with a baby, but my job allowed me to 
take her along, encouraged it really, something we should see 
far more of today. Abigail was a tiny, but tangible reminder of 
why Dobbs matters, because every life is unique and valuable. 
While being a parent is hard and immensely more difficult for 
single parents without community support. Moms across the 
country attest that it is worth it, and for women who are 
reluctant to parent, there is also hope. At any given time, 1 
million families are enthusiastically waiting to adopt. There 
is no such thing as an unwanted child.
    In another lie to the American people, Roe told women that 
their baby is merely potential life. The scientific evidence 
establishes that life begins at conception. At just six weeks, 
unborn babies' hearts begin to beat. At eight weeks, they have 
fingers and toes, and at 10 weeks, their unique fingerprints 
form. Yet without a hint of irony, pro-abortion activists posit 
that the reversal of Roe treats women as objects as less than 
full human beings. However, it is abortion that treats babies, 
including female babies, as mere objects, even while science 
establishes that they are fully alive and fully human, no 
matter how tiny they are.
    The truth is that Roe was not the pro-woman opinion that 
some imagine. In a patriarchal passage that the pro-abortion 
left would rather forget, Roe gave to a woman's doctor the 
ability to choose an abortion. As the late Justice Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg explained, Roe was ``physician-centered, focused on a 
doctor's freedom to practice his profession as he thinks 
best.'' She said the picture that I got from Roe was ``tall 
doctor and little woman needing his advice and care.''
    Abortion is a horribly inadequate solution to the very real 
problems that many women face. It often results in greater risk 
of death and illness. Many women are unsure of their decision, 
and a majority go on to suffer emotional and mental harm. 
Additionally, surveys show that women who choose abortion 
report that they would have chosen life if they had more 
support. Many companies today are eager to offer to pay for 
women to end their pregnancies, but how many of them are 
offering to pay for diapers, or childcare, or for flexible work 
options?
    Dobbs give women a voice and a vote. It returns the 
profoundly moral question to the people. It presents an 
opportunity for America to restore a culture that values 
families, mothers, and women. Thankfully, we are already seeing 
state and private entities, like the embattled pregnancy care 
centers, step up to surround expecting moms with a caring 
community and provide families with those diapers, car seats, 
clothing, housing, educational opportunities, job training, any 
medical, emotional, and post-abortive care.
    It has been three weeks since Dobbs. We still have 
questions. But one thing we know, a post-Roe America is a 
hopeful one. It's an America where we can recognize the 
inherent dignity and worth of every life and empower women by 
providing them with the resources they need to flourish through 
pregnancy and beyond. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Lopez, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

STATEMENT OF SARAH LOPEZ, ABORTION STORYTELLER, WE TESTIFY, AND 
           YOUTH PROGRAM MANAGER, JANE'S DUE PROCESS

    Ms. Lopez. Good morning, members of the committee. My name 
is Sarah Lopez. I am a Texan, a We Testify abortion 
storyteller, and the Youth Program Manager at Jane's Due 
Process where we help young people in Texas navigate parental 
consent laws and confidentially access abortion and birth 
control.
    When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, removing the 
constitutional right to abortion, clinics, abortion funds, and 
advocates weren't surprised, but it didn't make the news any 
less heart-wrenching. Countless clinics had to tell patients in 
the waiting room that they could no longer help them. Abortion 
funds, like Jane's Due Process, have paused services and are 
unsure of what, if any, support we can offer, but we are still 
doing everything we can in accordance with the law to help 
young people. This didn't happen overnight. Texas lawmakers 
chipped away at our rights against the outcry and will of the 
people at each legislative session. Even before the Dobbs 
ruling, in Texas, Senate Bill 8 banned abortion past six weeks, 
forcing Texans either to leave the state to get an abortion or 
remain pregnant against their will.
    Texas and other states that have banned abortion are ill-
equipped to care for families. Crisis pregnancy centers, which 
are unlicensed, fake clinics, designed to trick people out of 
having abortions, outnumber abortion clinics 3 to 1. In Texas, 
they receive $50 million a year, diverting money from the 
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program meant to help 
vulnerable families afford food, rent, and childcare. This 
funding is badly needed for Texas families but gets wasted on 
misinformation and lies. I know because I have seen it in 
action in many of the people that I have supported.
    I had an abortion almost six years ago as I graduated 
college. I was working in a restaurant, scraping by on $2.15 an 
hour plus tips. It was so little that I could barely afford my 
$250 a month rent. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew 
immediately that I wanted an abortion, but the stigma around 
abortion made me feel like what was happening to me was beyond 
my control and yet also somehow my fault. As long as I can 
remember, Texas has had dozens of restrictions making accessing 
abortion care much more complex and difficult than it should 
be. The government mandated 24-hour delay turned into a two-
week delay when combined with holiday office closures. As a 
sexual assault survivor, the transvaginal ultrasound that I had 
to receive was torture.
    All of this was medically unnecessary and enacted in hopes 
that I would give up my efforts to receive an abortion. 
However, after my abortion, I felt immediate relief. I also 
know how lucky I was. The independent clinic I went to, Austin 
Women's Health Center, was nearby, and the nurse held my hand 
during my procedure to make sure that I was comfortable. My 
boyfriend, who I am still with, drove me to my appointments and 
paid for my abortion. My best friend, Grace, held me in her 
arms and reassured me that I didn't do anything wrong.
    Later, I learned that there is an ecosystem of fierce 
advocates at abortion funds who do everything they can to make 
sure that people are still able to have a dignified and 
supportive experience despite the many obstacles they face. We 
have helped countless people who didn't have a support system, 
reliable childcare, or any method of transportation. Being 
forced to leave the state or city or state you live in takes an 
emotional toll on people. Without basic necessities, like 
reliable phone, or internet access, a photo ID, or a bank 
account, it can feel impossible. But clinics, abortion funds, 
and practical support organizations are the networks of support 
which move mountains to ensure that people can still get the 
care that they need.
    I never would have dreamed that I would be able to tell 
people about my abortion, let alone sit before you here today 
and talk about it. To some extent, I wish I didn't have to talk 
about something so personal in this setting. But I hope that by 
being here today, people who currently need abortions know that 
they are not alone. We deserve better. This is about our right 
to self-determination. It is about centering pleasure and our 
struggle for collective liberation and reproductive justice. It 
is about not leaving people behind. It is about fighting back 
against the surveillance and subsequent criminalization of 
pregnancy outcomes. Everyone should have access to the full 
range of reproductive healthcare, and that includes abortion.
    As I close, I want to be clear. This ruling is yet another 
attempt by lawmakers to eradicate our autonomy and sense of 
self. But what these same lawmakers don't understand is that no 
one, no matter how much power you hold, will ever be able to 
dissolve our community bonds, our capacity to maintain hope 
amidst so much despair, and our unrelenting love for our 
people. As we say at We Testify, everyone loves someone who has 
had abortions, and as you reflect on my testimony, I hope you 
think about those whom you love.
    Thank you for the opportunity to share my story with you 
here today.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, I thank you. I thank all of the 
panelists. We tried to get abortion providers to come in and 
tell their stories, some of whom have experienced violence, but 
they were afraid to come in.
    I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.
    For years, right-wing lawmakers across the country have 
been pushing so-called trigger bans that are designed to ban 
abortion immediately if Roe fell. Now that the Supreme Court 
has thrown out the constitutional right to abortion, 16 states 
have banned or nearly banned abortions, and many more will 
follow. And we have a map here that shows where abortion is 
banned, will soon be banned, or is being seriously considered, 
almost half of the states. These bans are stripping away the 
rights for millions of Americans across our country.
    Representative Shannon, I understand that any day now, 
Georgia may implement a six-week ban on abortion. What would 
the impact be on the people you represent?
    Ms. Shannon. Thank you, Madam Chair for the question. As I 
mentioned in my testimony, yes, most of Georgia does not have 
the resources that the Atlanta Metro area has, and Georgia 
ranks high consistently for maternal mortality deaths. And so, 
if abortion were outlawed, simply put, we will be outlawing 
access to care, which is something that would only exacerbate 
maternal mortality, so this would be a tremendous issue for the 
majority of the state. I have mentioned before how low our 
wages are in the state and in many places have really become 
unaffordable. And so, this would be a tremendous burden and 
would amount to structural violence for many communities around 
the state.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Michigan has a law on the 
books from nearly a century ago that would ban abortion 
immediately. This law has been put on hold by a Michigan court 
while it is litigated. Senator McMorrow, what does this 
uncertainty mean to the people in Michigan who need abortions 
and reproductive healthcare right now, and what are you worried 
about for the future?
    Ms. McMorrow. Madam Chair, the implications are 
devastating. So, as you mentioned, this law was written nearly 
a century ago, but the original version was written in 1847, 
and it provides no exception for rape or incest or age. It is 
vague enough to potentially include medication abortion and 
even contraception. It is dire. Right now, there is a 
preliminary injunction, meaning that abortion is still legal, 
but our Republican colleagues are spending almost a million 
dollars of taxpayer dollars to challenge that injunction, to 
force the 1931 law into effect immediately, arguing that such 
legislation should be decided in the legislature when, in fact, 
my Democratic colleagues and I had not only introduced bills to 
repeal the 1931 law, but to replace it with the Reproductive 
Health Act, which would codify abortion access and reproductive 
rights, and the legislature refuses to take those bills up.
    Michigan is currently one of the most gerrymandered states 
in the country. It is quite literally minority rule at the 
moment. And you need to look no further than an effort led by 
citizens here to forward a petition initiative to amend our 
state constitution, an initiative that requires 425,000 
signatures to get on the November ballot. The organization, led 
by Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Michigan Voices, which is 
a coalition of women of color, collected more than 800,000 
signatures. That is about 1 in 10 registered voters in the 
state of Michigan physically found a petition, signed it to get 
it on the ballot. They have turned in the highest number of 
petition signatures of any petition initiative in state 
history. The people are speaking. They are speaking very loudly 
because they know how devastating this 1931 law will be if and 
when it goes into effect.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Professor Goodwin, we know 
that Black women face dramatically higher rates of maternal 
mortality than white women. In my own city, it is even higher 
than the national average, unfortunately, and it is 
unacceptable that despite having the highest maternal mortality 
rate among our peer countries, we are now forcing people to 
remain pregnant against their will. What does the Dobbs 
decision mean for those who will be forced to remain pregnant, 
and particularly for Black women to be forced against their 
will to remain pregnant?
    Ms. Goodwin. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for that 
question. This is no hyperbole but to say that it is 
essentially a death sentence, given the data that we already 
know, given what the Supreme Court already knows and has 
expressed in 2016 that a woman is 14 times more likely to die 
by carrying a pregnancy to term than having an abortion. That 
statistic only magnifies in the states like Mississippi, Texas, 
Louisiana, the deadliest places in all of the industrialized 
world to be pregnant.
    This is also data that comes from those very states, their 
departments of health. So, it is not information that is made 
up from some left-wing radical organization. This is data that 
is produced in those very red states that show these alarming 
rates of death. And essentially, it is a death sentence for 
those women and also the girls affected. It means we have free 
states and non-free states like we did during the American 
period of slavery.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The Supreme Court's decision 
to overturn Roe v. Wade takes us backward. It is dangerous, as 
we just heard, and flat wrong. Democrats are dedicated and 
determined to do everything we can to reverse this, and I now 
yield back.
    As previously stated at the beginning of the hearing, 
Professor Goodwin has a hard stop at 11. Professor Goodwin, 
thank you very much for joining us today for your testimony, 
and you are excused. Thank you.
    Ms. Goodwin. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman from North Carolina, 
Ms. Foxx is recognized.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My question will be 
for Ms. Hawley. Ms. Hawley, I just heard them talk about that 
it would be a death sentence for the mother taking the life of 
the baby. And I find that really interesting that we are 
talking about a hypothetical situation of taking the life of 
the mother when they are actually taking the life of a baby. We 
are living in a brave new world right now. It is unbelievable.
    Ms. Hawley, following the Supreme Court's historic decision 
on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, 
Democrat strategists and so-called pundits within the 
mainstream media went into a manic frenzy. Every negative 
characterization in the book was thrown at the Supreme Court, 
its conservative justices, Republicans, and the entire pro-life 
movement. Headlines foretold of the apocalypse and how our 
democracy was hanging on by a mere thread, though we live, in 
fact, in a constitutional republic.
    The entire country was swept up by the media's maelstrom of 
political skullduggery. It was intended to deceive the American 
people, and, more importantly, distract them from the truth. 
The truth is that the decision in Dobbs simply rights a wrong 
that has lasted for almost half a century. Decision-making is 
returned to the states where it belongs and where it should 
have been the entire time. federalism is finally receiving the 
due deference that it deserves.
    Ms. Hawley, in recent years, pro-choice advocates have 
shifted their agenda by stating that abortion is a necessary 
component of healthcare, which is what we just heard. Would you 
consider taking the life of an unborn baby healthcare?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely not. Abortion is not healthcare. 
And, in fact, if we look at the statistics from women who have 
had abortions themselves, 75 percent of those women say they 
would have chosen life if circumstances would have been 
different. Abortion is not healthcare.
    Ms. Foxx. So, in your opinion, is the Dobbs ruling an 
attack on women's rights, and did women ever have a 
constitutional right to take the life of their unborn baby?
    Ms. Hawley. The Supreme Court opinion, Dobbs, cogently 
explained that there is nothing in the Constitution's text, or 
structure, or in our Nation's history that would in any sense 
support a right to an abortion. If you look at our Nation's 
history, abortion had been unlawful since the common law. In 
1973, when Roe vs. Wade was decided, that case overturned the 
pro-life laws of nearly every single state.
    Ms. Foxx. Would you talk a little bit about the pro-life 
movement being a pro-woman movement?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. As we mentioned, of course, babies 
can be female as well, so it is definitely pro-woman in that 
sense. As well, the pro-life movement and ADF believes in the 
inherent dignity and value of every single person. We believe 
that every person has the right to life and that the pro-life 
community has and will continue to come alongside and empower 
women. If we talk about pregnancy care centers, they are not 
fake centers. In 2019, they served 1.85 million families, 
provided $266 million worth of goods of car seats, of baby 
formula, which is surprisingly hard to get, diapers, of the 
things that women really need. They also provide emotional 
counseling. They provide fatherhood training, housing, 
educational training, things that can enable women to survive 
and thrive.
    Ms. Foxx. Thank you. As I said before this committee last 
September, we must pay attention to the languages being used to 
justify the destruction of human life. Abortion is the 
deliberate termination of human pregnancy and the destruction 
of an unborn baby. The term has been tossed around the public 
square so much over the course of decades, that the magnitude 
of this horrendous act itself has become lost. It is a 
euphemism designed to deceive with the goal of dehumanizing the 
unborn before its life is extinguished.
    Allow me to deconstruct and accurately define the 
euphemism, the life, the left has switched to using as of late: 
``women's health:'' the destruction of innocent unborn babies; 
``reproductive freedom:'' the ability to murder a child out of 
convenience; ``abortion rights:'' the agency to rob another of 
life; ``pro-choice:'' anti-life.
    Day by day the pro-life movement in America continues to 
grow, but our fight is not over. If we are to close this 
shameful chapter of murdering the unborn and consign it to the 
ash heap of history, we need to clear the left's linguistic 
smokescreen from the equation entirely. The facts are on our 
side, and it is up to us to correct the record once and for 
all. We are the ones who will ensure that life always wins.
    Thank you, Madam Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, 
is now recognized.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this important 
hearing. Without the protections of statehood, the people who I 
represent, D.C. residents, are uniquely threatened by the 
Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade because of 
the Congress's undemocratic control over the nearly 700,000 
D.C. residents. Since 1988, with few exceptions, Congress has 
used its control of D.C.'s budget to prevent D.C. from using 
its local funds to cover abortion care for D.C. residents 
enrolled in Medicaid. When combined with the Hyde Amendment, 
which prohibits Federal Medicaid funds from being used for 
abortion care, there is no possibility for D.C. residents 
enrolled in Medicaid to use that coverage for abortion care. In 
2019, more than 20 percent of adults in the District were 
enrolled in Medicaid. Ms. Goss Graves, what impact does it have 
on people with less income when abortion care is not covered by 
Medicaid?
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, Roe v. Wade was always the 
floor. And for people who have low income who have Medicaid or 
other Federal health insurance, what it has meant is that 
access to abortion is not meaningful. And what we are seeing 
around the country right now, as additional hurdles are in 
place and people have to travel or seek care out of their 
community, we are now seeing that terrible situation where 
people couldn't access care, who have low incomes, dramatically 
extended. And the additional difference now are the painful 
criminal penalties that are falling on top of it. So, D.C. 
residents already know some of this, and we also know it is 
going to get worse.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you. Republicans have long expressed an 
interest in overturning the will of D.C. residents to ban 
access to abortion in D.C.. They previously tried to ban access 
to abortion after 20 weeks, and I was able to nullify or to 
overcome that. And they could try to ban access to all abortion 
were they to take control of Congress. Governor Youngkin in 
Virginia has also pledged to try and restrict abortion access 
in Virginia, so what we have is providers in D.C., Maryland, 
and Virginia. These are the states that are aligned together to 
serve patients from as far away as Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
    Representative Shannon, what would it mean for patients 
from Southern states if abortion becomes illegal in both D.C. 
and Virginia?
    Ms. Shannon. Well, as I mentioned before, and I want to 
correct the record on a few things, abortion absolutely is 
healthcare. When you have a miscarriage or an ectopic 
pregnancy, a lot of times abortion is the way that these things 
are resolved. And so, this is the reason that you see across 
the world, countries that have more restrictions on 
reproductive freedom and countries that outlaw abortion, they 
have higher maternal mortality rates. And statistically, you 
also see that when folks are allowed to exercise their 
reproductive freedom, they are able to bring down maternal 
mortality rates in areas. And so, that completely makes the 
case about whether or not abortion is healthcare.
    So again, any attempts to outlaw abortion, no matter if you 
are talking about D.C., Georgia, Texas, or any place, is going 
to create an issue like what we currently have going on in 
Georgia, where Georgia is serving as almost like an abortion 
hub, where folks are coming from other areas getting abortions 
in Georgia. And that creates a lot of issues for clinics who 
cannot accommodate the demand, and it really just puts care out 
of reach for many. And it boils down to then the only people 
who can actually get the healthcare that they seek are people 
who have resources. What is important to realize in all of this 
is that when a person has made a decision about whether or not 
to keep a pregnancy, they should be able to get access to care 
with dignity and without judgment or government interference.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 
Hice, is now recognized.
    Mr. Hice. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am an ardent supporter 
of our Constitution and the inalienable rights that are 
guaranteed therein, and specifically, first and foremost among 
those are the right to life, without which none of the others 
matter, quite frankly. And for that reason, I have been in this 
battle for a long, long time. I am extremely pleased with the 
decision of the Supreme Court and applaud the justices for 
undoing the irreparable harm done both to women and over 60 
million unborn babies over the past 50 years.
    Let's get to the question of personhood. I believe a lot of 
the battle, the issue comes down to this question here. Am I 
correct in assuming that our witnesses, with the exception of 
Ms. Hawley, would more or less say that it is your belief that 
unborn babies do not have certain rights, such as the right to 
life? Is that generally accepted? You believe unborn babies do 
have the right to life?
    Ms. Shannon. What I believe is that viability is different 
for every pregnancy. No two pregnancies are the same. And so, 
you can't just say across the board at what point any pregnancy 
would be viable.
    Mr. Hice. OK. Well, the question is, I didn't ask about 
viability. It is about personhood. Let me ask Ms. Hawley, at 
what point does a baby become a person? That is the question 
here.
    Ms. Hawley. Sorry about that. I believe that life begins at 
conception, and scientific fact establishes that. We are no 
longer living in 1973. If you look at an ultrasound from that 
time period, you really can't see a whole lot. If you look at 
an ultrasound today, take 15 weeks, which is well before 
viability, the point in time when the Mississippi's Gestational 
Age Act applied, you can clearly see your baby move and 
stretch. She can hiccup. She can quite likely feel pain. There 
is no question that that baby is both fully alive and fully 
human.
    Mr. Hice. Is there any instance of a woman giving birth to 
something that is not a human being, a baby, like I don't know 
a turtle, or, as our First Lady suggested, a breakfast taco? I 
mean, is there any instance where anything other than a human 
being has been born?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, there definitely are instances where 
people have stillborn.
    Mr. Hice. It is still a baby?
    Ms. Goss Graves. I guess the point is----
    Mr. Hice. It is still a person, is it not?
    Ms. Goss Graves. If I can finish? I actually think that 
Representative Shannon's point about viability goes to exactly 
what you are naming. When the Court----
    Mr. Hice. I am talking about personhood, not viability.
    Ms. Goss Graves.--viability line, it did so because the 
consideration was whether or not the fetus can live outside of 
the body.
    Mr. Hice. There are many people who cannot live without 
insulin. Does that mean we should kill those people who cannot 
live without insulin?
    Ms. Goss Graves. But there is no way for them to live.
    Mr. Hice. Listen, this is my time.
    Ms. Goss Graves. Oh, I thought you were asking us, so I was 
wanting to have an opportunity to explain. So, it is not a 
question of turtles, or I am not really sure. What it is is a 
question of----
    Mr. Hice. It is a question of personhood. That is what I am 
getting to. And there is not an instance that I am aware of of 
anyone giving birth to something other than a person. So, if it 
is a person after birth, it, by extension, is a person before 
birth.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I really hope people are watching today 
because the question on the table is about abortion for sure. 
But actually, the conversation you are having is about 
contraception. It is about in vitro fertilization. It is about 
a whole larger set of questions----
    Mr. Hice. No, you mischaracterize. I am having a clear 
discussion about abortion and the fact that it is a person. It 
is a person that we are dealing with, and that person after 
birth clearly is a person and, therefore, by extension, before 
birth is also a person. And the question comes down to when 
does a person have the right to life, and when does a person 
have the right to healthcare. And we can argue all day that 
abortion is healthcare. It certainly is not healthcare to the 
baby. Healthcare protects life, and abortion, by definition, 
destroys life. It is not healthcare. But if we are talking 
about a person, which we are, we are not talking a taco, we are 
talking a person in the womb.
    Ms. Goss Graves. We are talking a fetus, which is a medical 
term.
    Mr. Hice. Let me ask you. Let me go back, Ms. Hawley. You 
brought up this issue of healthcare. Let's talk about 
healthcare and the baby. What is the issue involving abortion, 
and healthcare, and the baby?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The time has expired. The witness may 
answer.
    Ms. Hawley. So, I think there are a few things on which we 
need to set the record straight. One, that in ectopic 
pregnancy, treatment for that condition never involves an 
abortion. If you go to Planned Parenthood's website, they make 
clear that treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not an 
abortion, or at least they used to. I know there has been some 
scare mongering going on. The same is true of a miscarriage. 
And abortion is a situation in which a child, as the Supreme 
Court explained in Dobbs, is purposely put to death. It is the 
intentional destruction of the human being. Neither 
miscarriages, nor medical emergencies, nor ectopic pregnancies 
involve that situation.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. The 
gentleman from Illinois, Krishnamoorthi, is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for 
having this important hearing. Ms. Lopez, I would like to 
direct your attention to this graphic that I brought here. 
Basically, it talks about the number of arrests of women for 
abortion, miscarriage, and pregnancy specific crimes in the 
United States.
    [Chart]
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. In the 32 years, between 1973 and 2005, 
there were 413 such arrests of the women who had these 
different procedures. Between 2006 and 2020, so in 14 years, 
there were 1,331 arrests of women for these procedures. So, in 
32 years, we had about 400, and in the succeeding 14 years, 
there were triple that number, namely 1,331 such arrests. Now, 
are you concerned that in this post-Roe world that we are 
living in, in all those states where abortions are being 
banned, that we are going to have an increase in the number of 
arrests of women for such procedures?
    Ms. Lopez. Thank you for your question. I am absolutely 
concerned. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that, 
especially in Texas. It has essentially been a case study for 
what a post-Roe world has been, even before S.B. 8, based on 
the restrictions. But since S.B. 8, we have seen immense fear, 
and grief, and isolation from pregnant people who desperately 
need help and do not have the means of leaving the state or the 
city they live in to access care. I also think that bans and 
restrictions on abortion do not actually stop abortions. They 
just, as we see there, make it more difficult to access care 
and make the idea of criminalization far more of a reality.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Representative Shannon, if abortion is 
made illegal in Georgia, are you afraid that women in Georgia 
will be prosecuted and imprisoned for seeking these types of 
procedures?
    Ms. Shannon. I am worried about that, and we do know that 
from 1973 to 2005, the instance of low-income and, 
particularly, Black women were disproportionately criminalized 
for having miscarriages. What a lot of people don't realize is 
that a lot of the same medications that are used for 
miscarriage are also used for medication abortion, which is 
typically performed at home. And there is really not a way to 
determine if someone had a miscarriage or if someone had an 
abortion. And so, what we do know is that our criminal legal 
system is really good at locking up Black and brown folks. And 
so, I am very worried that when a person has a miscarriage, and 
they are interrogated by law enforcement, or they are 
prosecuted, I am very worried that our criminal legal system 
will likely believe Karen, but not believe Keisha when she says 
she had a miscarriage.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Well, Ms. Goss Graves, let me just ask 
you a question. Earlier you were asked the question, what does 
abortion have to do with healthcare. My understanding of this 
situation is that we are talking about the healthcare of the 
mother. And in so many instances, to protect the life of the 
mother, an abortion, unfortunately, is sometimes required. Can 
you speak about that and how, in that situation, where 
protecting the life of the mother might lead to the mother in 
jail?
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, when Professor Goodwin was here, 
she said twice a statistic that I am still startled by, which 
is that Black woman were 118 times more likely to die from 
giving birth in Mississippi than from abortion, and there are a 
lot of health instances that come up. Pregnancy is an 
inherently risky endeavor. And you know, it isn't the public 
story----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Not for the male, for the female?
    Ms. Goss Graves. For the pregnant person, right. For the 
person who is carrying a pregnancy, it is inherently risky. And 
the idea that there is no mention of the life, or the health, 
or the mental wellbeing, either in the Supreme Court majority 
opinion or in the remarks earlier----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And that is why the majority of 
Americans think it is radical and extreme. And so let me just 
ask you this question. These prosecutors who are going to go 
after all these women, we know the number of arrests are going 
to skyrocket very shortly. All those overzealous prosecutors 
and law enforcement are going to go after women. They are going 
to want to get their data. They are going to try to go after 
their data, which has often been entrusted to big tech app 
companies that keep their sexual health information and 
reproductive health information. Chairwoman Maloney and I have 
launched an investigation with regard to protecting the privacy 
of that information. Could you please comment to me, 
Representative Shannon, on the importance of protecting the 
privacy of that reproductive health information?
    Ms. Shannon. Well, protecting the privacy of reproductive 
health information is not only important, but it is also 
important to protect privacy for all healthcare decisions. And 
that is why we keep reinforcing that the choice of whether or 
not to carry a pregnancy is a healthcare decision. And it is 
important that every person in this country experience the 
freedom of privacy to be able to make their own healthcare 
decisions with their own processes without government getting 
involved.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you. I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, is recognized.
    Mr. Grothman. Great. First of all, I would like to refer to 
a letter here that I am going to submit to the committee from a 
group called Family Action or Wisconsin Family Action, 
Wisconsin Family Council, which I dealt with a lot when I was a 
state legislator. They were attacked with Molotov cocktails in 
Madison, Wisconsin. The reason I bring it up is not just that 
they were attacked, but the apparent lax or uncaringness of the 
law enforcement in Madison, Wisconsin.
    This is a disturbing trend we have seen around the country. 
We know there were variety of cities in which riots broke out a 
couple of years ago, including both in Madison and Kenosha, 
Wisconsin. Both times, it didn't seem like law enforcement 
would engage the rioters. And I think the reason they didn't is 
that the political leaders felt that if you were doing 
something--that was, the far left, which sadly runs your Party 
today--we will allow people to physically attack you, almost 
kill you in this case, and we won't do anything about it, but I 
think it is something that should be in the record. I think it 
is something that perhaps other Congressmen on this committee 
would like to read to see where we are headed as a country. So, 
I would like to ask this letter to be submitted.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Grothman. Thank you. Now, I have a few questions here. 
I know in Wisconsin, abortion was legal at the time, or 
abortion was illegal at the time Roe v. Wade went into effect. 
And, in fact, the statute that was in effect was put in place 
in, I believe, 1849, either 1848 or 1849. Could you comment on, 
in our country, the state of laws regarding abortions, the time 
Roe v Wade went into effect, Ms. Hawley?
    Ms. Hawley. So, absolutely. At the time Roe v. Wade went 
into effect in 1973, as I mentioned in my opening testimony, 
that decision, that judicial decision, again decided by seven 
male authors, overturned the pro-life laws of nearly every 
single state. If we look back in time to 1868, when the 
Fourteen Amendment was passed, nearly three-quarters of the 
states criminalized abortion. So, you just can't look at any 
point in our Nation's history and derive some sort of right to 
an abortion. And, in fact, the opposite is true in our country 
and the states have long protected life.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. And I believe there were, what, either 
two or three states in which abortion was legal in 1973. Is 
that right?
    Ms. Hawley. That is correct, with significant restrictions.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Next question. At the time, and you said 
this before, but I think it is something that merits people 
pondering on as to where we are in morality in this country. 
The state of ultrasound today compared to 1973, when almost 
every state realized that having an abortion, killing that 
little baby, we have all seen the ultrasounds today, was a 
horrific thing. But could you comment on the change in the 
status of ultrasounds between then and now?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. So, we have had 50 years of 
scientific advances, and everyone that has attended a pregnancy 
ultrasound at various points, you know, at six weeks, you have 
the heartbeat. At 8 to 10 weeks most of your internal organs 
for the baby are forming. And now we even have 3D and 4D 
ultrasounds that allow you to see the baby's face. You can even 
sort of determine what it is they are going to look like.
    Mr. Grothman. So much more obvious today that abortion is 
horrific than it was in 1973?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. And, in fact, if you look at page 
two, I believe, of my written testimony, we have an example of 
an ultrasound in 1973 and one today at 15 weeks, and the 
differences could not be more stark.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. This idea of abortion, and particularly 
even late-term abortion, in places like North Korea, China, 
Vietnam, some of the most repressive countries in the world, we 
know what is going on with the Uyghurs there in China. Do you 
want to comment in general on the type of countries that would 
consider it important to legalize abortion?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. So, we see totalitarian regimes, 
such as North Korea, such as China.
    Mr. Grothman. Not just totalitarian. I want you to comment 
on the belief in God.
    Ms. Hawley. So, I think we see in these countries the idea 
that life is not precious, that life is not valuable. Again, if 
you----
    Mr. Grothman. What did they do to churches in North Korea 
or China?
    Ms. Hawley. Neither are churches valuable in North Korea or 
China.
    Mr. Grothman. Right. People there, do the people who run 
the country believe in God?
    Ms. Hawley. So, I think they prosecute the church there, 
sir.
    Mr. Grothman. Right. Is there a correlation then between 
countries that allow abortions, late-term abortions in 
particular, and countries that almost the state religion would 
be atheism?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. 
Briefly answer.
    Ms. Hawley. The one interesting thing is that when 
Christianity was born, one of the Roman culture that 
Christianity emerged from was one in which was devastating to 
young children. Parents had superintending rights. A child had 
no right to life.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. We 
have to keep into our timeframe.
    Mr. Raskin, you are now recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nearly 8 in 10 
Americans say that the decision about whether or not to have an 
abortion should be left to women and their families and their 
healthcare providers. 62 percent of Americans say that they 
support a nationwide law protecting a woman's right to choose 
consistent with Roe v. Wade, including not just the vast 
majority of Democrats, but 57 percent of Independents and 40 
percent of Republicans, although they don't appear to have much 
voice in the Republican Caucus today. But there are lots of 
Republicans who agree with us that this is a choice that 
belongs to women, girls, and their families. That is the vast 
majority of the American people.
    Now we want a nationwide law which codifies Roe v. Wade as 
a woman's right to choose because we believe this is 
fundamentally a question of personal freedom and autonomy. They 
want a nationwide law which makes it a crime to have an 
abortion anywhere in any case, including where women and girls 
who have been raped or victims of incest. And that follows 
logically, and naturally, and honestly from their position, 
which we have heard represented several times today, that life 
begins at conception in every case. So how could you allow a 
woman to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest? That 
would be murder, is what they say.
    Now, Ms. Goss Graves, I am worried about this. As the 
founder of the Republican Party, President Lincoln said, ``A 
house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free.'' Can we endure half free choice states and half 
theocratic-compelled pregnancy states? Is that going to work 
for America? What do you see as the future of this?
    Ms. Goss Graves. I am deeply worried. This is the first 
time in our Nation's history where the Supreme Court has taken 
away an individual right in the Constitution, a right that two 
generations of people have come up with. So now you have 
grandmothers looking at their grandchildren and understanding 
that they are going to have fewer rights. It cannot stand, and 
it is opening up a range of unprecedented legal issues that I 
never thought we would be dealing with: whether or not you can 
travel and leave your state, whether or not you can be 
surveilled, whether or not you as an individual are truly free 
in this country. That is the debate we are having.
    Mr. Raskin. All right. Senator McMorrow, I want to come to 
you because in a number of the compelled pregnancies states, 
they are already talking about passing laws to make it a crime 
for a woman to leave a state for the purpose of obtaining 
healthcare in a state where abortion is still lawful. And they 
want to make it a crime for people who enabled them to leave 
the state, whether they are in another state or they are in 
that state. I have introduced legislation with a couple of 
colleagues, which I hope we will be hearing this week or next 
week, to allow for the free travel of American citizens among 
the states for the purposes of obtaining healthcare that is 
lawful in the destination state. Is that something that you 
would think is important in Michigan?
    Ms. McMorrow. I do think that it is important, but I want 
to take a step back, too, and remind everybody how devastating 
that is going to be for those who are low income, particularly 
women of color, younger girls who do not have the means to 
travel. And just to bring it back to an example here in 
Michigan, our attorney general, Dana Nessel, has said that she 
herself in her capacity will not enforce the 1931 law, but she 
has also said that she cannot compel county-level prosecutors 
to do the same. So not only is there going to be a difference, 
depending on what state you live in, what state you are able to 
travel to, but down to your zip code, whether or not you can 
get direct access to care, whether or not you have access to 
physicians who are trained, who don't feel fear.
    And I want to go back to the story that I shared in my 
testimony, Michal and Jordan shared with me that they learned 
that there were only four physicians in all of Metro Detroit 
who had been trained to carry out the procedure that they 
needed. More than almost half of the state's population live in 
Metro Detroit. That is only four physicians for more than 4 
million people. So, we have already seen this, so I agree with 
you, but it is even much more local than that.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, I appreciate that, Ms. Shannon. Finally, 
the Supreme Court has targeted the constitutional right to 
privacy, more than a half century of precedent. That 
constitutional right to privacy guarantees women the right not 
to be sterilized against their will, which is what happened to 
thousands of women in the last century, including in Virginia. 
Do you fear that there are governments which are going to, on 
the one hand, stop women from making their own decisions about 
abortion, but go back to----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired. We 
are going to be enforcing the five-minute rule.
    Ms. Shannon. Can I briefly answer?
    Mr. Raskin. Can she answer the question?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Very briefly.
    Ms. Shannon. Sure. So, we don't even have to go back years 
ago to force sterilization. We actually had this happen in 
Georgia, in an immigrant detention center in Georgia, where 
folks were forcibly sterilized. So that is a real threat.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. Thank you. Mr. Jordan from Ohio is 
now recognized.
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Hawley, is the left 
trying to intimidate the U.S. Supreme Court?
    Ms. Hawley. I think if we look at the evidence from the 
last few months after the leak of the Supreme Court opinion and 
Dobbs, absolutely.
    Mr. Jordan. I agree with you. I would argue it actually 
started before the leak. Was it intimidation when the Minority 
Leader, then Minority Leader, currently the Majority Leader of 
the Senate, went on the Supreme Court steps and said, ``Gorsuch 
and Kavanaugh, you will face the whirlwind. You are not going 
to know what hit you.'' Was that an intimidation tactic?
    Ms. Hawley. So, it seems like when a Senate minority leader 
stands on the steps at the Supreme Court and calls out two 
sitting justices by name, I believe that would be interpreted 
as a threat.
    Mr. Jordan. When the Democratic chair of the Judiciary 
Committee introduced legislation 15 months ago to add four 
associate justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, was that an 
effort to intimidate the Court?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely.
    Mr. Jordan. When the Judiciary Committee, and I just came 
from there, just next door--we are having a markup as we 
speak--did a concerted effort, had a hearing on Justice Thomas 
and talked about his wife, was that an effort to intimidate the 
court?
    Ms. Hawley. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Jordan. And then you mentioned the leaked opinion, and 
you clerked on the Supreme Court. You have a distinguished 
legal background. Was that an effort to intimidate the Court, 
the first time that I know of we had a draft opinion that was 
leaked?
    Ms. Hawley. That is absolutely correct. It was the first 
time an opinion had ever been leaked. There were a few news 
reports trying to normalize that practice. That is untrue, a 
Supreme Court opinion has never leaked prior to it being ready 
to be issued. And as we saw, subsequent to that, 40 pregnancy 
care centers have been vandalized and targeted. In addition, 
Justice Kavanaugh had a murder attempt at his own home.
    Mr. Jordan. Yes, you are ahead of me there, and I was just 
going to point out. I only had 32 on my list. This is 
frightening, 32 crisis pregnancy centers and churches since May 
3, two months and one week that has all happened. That is a 
concerted effort to go after pro-life people and intimidate a 
separate and equal branch of government with the support of 
these guys. That is how wrong this is.
    So, the protests and the attacks that my colleague from 
Wisconsin talked about in Madison but have happened 39 other 
places around the country in two months and one week, not to 
mention an assassination attempt. I think probably the first 
time in American history where we have had an assassination 
attempt on a sitting justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their 
whole focus is on intimidating the Court, and they are the ones 
with the radical position. Mr. Raskin just said we are radical. 
They are the ones who think you should take the life of an 
unborn child. You could take the life of unborn child right up 
until their birthday.
    Voice. Would the gentleman yield?
    Mr. Jordan. Is that accurate, Ms. Hawley?
    Voice. Would the gentleman yield?
    Mr. Jordan. No. My question is for Ms. Hawley.
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely, and I would love to set the record 
straight on something Congressman Raskin said. He said that the 
American people support the Women's Health Protection Act. They 
do not. Less than 10 percent of the American public would 
support abortion up until birth for any reason. That law 
Federalizes a right to sex-and race-selective abortion.
    Mr. Jordan. But it is even worse, Ms. Hawley. It is even 
worse, because we know the former Democratic Governor of 
Virginia didn't want it to go right up until their birthday. 
This is sickening. He wanted to go after that. That is their 
position. We are the party that is pro-life. We actually think 
you should protect unborn children, not do what they want to 
do. And it is even worse though this intimidation effort 
because we had the Speaker of the House wait four weeks--four 
weeks--after the Senate unanimously passed legislation to 
protect justices' families after the left had posted online, 
here is where Justice Barrett's children go to school, here is 
where her family worships on Sunday morning. After posting 
that, Speaker Pelosi says nothing to worry about. We are going 
to wait four weeks until we protect the justice's family.
    And I would just finally add this in the last minute, and I 
will let you respond. I think it has gotten even worse. We now 
have the key agency in the executive branch, the Justice 
Department--the Justice Department--failing to enforce a 
statute, which is directly on point which says when there are 
protests at Justices' home with the intention of intimidating 
them and influencing a decision pending in front of the Court, 
you are supposed to deal with that. And we have a Justice 
Department that refuses to do so, a Justice Department that is 
now working with the left to intimidate a separate and equal 
branch of government. Would you agree?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. And we see in sort of this, this 
reign of intimidation, it is not only Supreme Court justices 
and their families, as you mentioned, publishing online, where 
they go to church, where their families, including justices 
with young families, reside. Protesters at night is never 
something you want your children to see. In addition, we have 
got this just outrageous attack on pregnancy care centers. How 
we think this helps women in need is just beyond me.
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you so much. Thank you for your work in 
the pro-life committee and the work you do representing 
freedoms around the country. Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentlewoman from 
Michigan, Ms. Tlaib, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Talib. Thank you, Madam Chair. If I may, I would like 
to submit for the record, I will submit an article about the 
Secretary of State of Michigan being targeted for obviously 
allowing the votes to be counted in Michigan, literally in 
front of her home in the dark, as well as recently uplifting 
what has happened to a colleague, Representative Jayapal, a man 
who basically wanted to commit a hate crime, showed up at her 
home shouting and with weapon, I believe, to kill our 
colleague.
    I want to reiterate the importance of----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Ms. Talib. Yes. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. It is 
important to understand this has been happening a long time for 
many of us, especially women of color, in this chamber. 
Republicans are claiming this is about returning power to the 
states, but they have said themselves that they want to ban 
abortion nationwide. Kevin McCarthy himself, and Steve Scalise, 
as well as Mike Pence has said it. In fact, every Republican in 
this committee, though, supports legislation that would lead to 
nationwide restrictions on abortion, and many of them support a 
bill to impose prison time on doctors who perform abortions 
after six weeks. So, we need to set the record straight and 
don't let the rhetoric fool you.
    With that, I do want to go to our Michigan Senator 
McMorrow. You know, one of the things that has been impactful, 
Senator, is the fact that historically, we have never seen 
anything like this in the state of Michigan. We have collected 
over 800,000 signatures to allow to repeal the ban of the 1931 
ban on abortion. Is that correct?
    Ms. McMorrow. That is correct. This is a constitutional 
amendment, the highest number of signatures collected for any 
initiative in state history.
    Ms. Talib. We will get the opportunity to allow our state 
to choose whether or not a woman gets the right to control her 
body. Is that correct?
    Ms. McMorrow. That is correct.
    Ms. Talib. And do you believe, though, that this chamber 
would try to attempt to overturn that state's right?
    Ms. McMorrow. I do, in both the state level and the Federal 
level. So, to paint a picture, Michigan in 2014, Democrats got 
about 51 percent of the vote statewide. The state senate in the 
chamber that I serve, Republicans held 72 percent of Senate 
seats. So, this has led to an extremist view that is not in 
line with the majority of Michiganders. Consistently when 
polled, 60 to 70 percent of Michiganders support Roe, support 
keeping protections in place, and we have seen that Herculean 
effort come out in this ballot initiative.
    Ms. Talib. Yes, I have never seen anything like it, and I 
have worked on minimum wage, a number of other ballot 
initiatives, and I have never seen this kind of support. I 
would like to take the rest of the time to do something that 
might be a little scary for my Republican colleagues, which is 
to ask a woman's opinion.
    Ms. Lopez, thank you so much for being here with us today. 
What strikes me listening to your stories just how many state-
imposed hoops, loophole, you know, all these obstacles that you 
had to jump through in order to carry out a personal decision 
about your own body and access to medical procedure. Can you 
describe--I want you to take some time because I think people 
need to understand this is about human dignity and so much 
more. And so can you talk about, you know, really how it made 
you feel, but also just, you know, the experiences. I think 
many folks that might not have the courage to be here because 
they are so scared of the attacks.
    Ms. Lopez. Thank you so much. I guess I can start by saying 
that Texas has dozens of restrictions, had dozens of 
restrictions already in place prior to Dobbs, prior to SB 8. 
And when I had my abortion six years ago, I had no context or, 
you know, knowledge of what a restriction was. I didn't know 
that there was a forced waiting period that ended up pushing, 
you know, me further into pregnancy, another two weeks, because 
I couldn't access care when I needed to.
    As I mentioned in my testimony, the forced ultrasound felt 
horrible. I didn't understand why I was, you know, being asked 
to listen to, you know, embryonic cardiac activity when I knew 
I didn't want to be pregnant. And perhaps one of the most 
confusing parts of my experience was my provider telling me 
that the state requires that he tell patients that abortion 
causes depression, infertility, and breast cancer, and then by 
following that up by saying, the state requires me to say that, 
abortion is 100 percent safe, and many times it is safer than 
carrying a pregnancy to term.
    I didn't understand why a state was providing a doctor to 
spread misinformation to his patients, but I went through with 
it anyways. And despite the many restrictions that I faced, 
and, again, as I mentioned in my testimony, I do feel lucky 
that I lived in a city that had a clinic, that I was able to 
access care relatively smoothly. But what these restrictions 
are intended to do is try and stop people from having 
abortions, but abortion is healthcare.
    My abortion was the best decision I ever made. It was an 
act of self-love. And I am here today to make sure that 
everybody who currently needs an abortion, who has had an 
abortion, or will need an abortion is not alone, no matter what 
the state tries to force upon us. Thank you, so much for----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. 
Thank you.
    The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple of 
things. Mrs. Hawley, you clerked before Justice Roberts and 
argued cases before the Supreme Court, correct?
    Ms. Hawley. Yes, sir. I clerked for Chief Justice Roberts, 
and I have litigated before the Court, but not argued.
    Mr. Keller. Yes, thank you, and our government is a 
constitutional republic. In the Tenth amendment to our 
Constitution, as it says here, ``The powers not delegated to 
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to 
the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the 
people.'' The Dobbs decision simply took abortion and said the 
states will determine the laws that cover that within those 
state borders, correct?
    Ms. Hawley. That is correct. The Dobbs decision was 
actually one of judicial modesty. It corrected a 50-year error 
and returned to the people and the peoples' elected 
representatives the intensely moral issue of abortion.
    Mr. Keller. Where it should be, and that is asking a 
woman's opinion. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Following 
the Dobbs ruling, pro-life organizations, especially churches, 
have become scenes of vandalism and violence. On June 7, the 
Department of Homeland Security issued a National Terrorism 
Advisory System bulletin warning faith-based institutions of 
expected threats of violence in the coming months. The FBI 
issued a safety report regarding Jane's Revenge, the same 
domestic terrorist organization responsible for posting flyers 
around D.C. that read, ``The night SCOTUS overturns Roe v. 
Wade, hit the streets. You said you would riot. To our 
oppressors, if abortions aren't safe, you are not either.'' So, 
we have had that happen. And since Dobbs decision leaked on May 
2, over 100 pro-life institutions have been recipients of 
threats, desecration, vandalism, and arson.
    I ask unanimous consent to submit a list for the record 
from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, outlining the recent 
violence.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Keller. So, when we look at all the things that have 
happened, and I am thinking, where is the outrage at the 
intimidation and coercion and violence for these? So, I guess, 
Ms. Hawley, what would leaders or what should leaders like 
President Biden, and Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Schumer be 
doing to hold these perpetrators accountable for the violence 
they are either threatening or causing around our Nation?
    Ms. Hawley. Well, violence against anyone, especially 
against pregnancy care centers, especially against sitting 
justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, should be appropriately 
punished. It should be deterred. It is illegal to protest with 
the intent of changing a judicial decision before Supreme Court 
justice's home. That legislation should be passed to protect 
those judges and justices.
    In addition, I just think we should see real moral outrage 
at the idea that we are targeting pregnancy care centers. These 
are the centers that come alongside women to support them, to 
provide them with tangible resources, and counseling, and 
medical care, all of it free. And to think we would want to 
take this away from women who need it, it is insane to me.
    Mr. Keller. When we are talking about helping women and the 
most vulnerable, which are the unborn lives in our society, I 
think that when we don't stand up for that, what are the things 
will you not stand up for if you don't stand up for life? If a 
person isn't going to protect your life, do you think they are 
going to protect any of your other rights?
    Ms. Hawley. No, and as we think about unborn babies, these 
are the tiniest and most vulnerable humans among us. They are 
most deserving of our protection, and it doesn't matter whether 
they are viable or need a little bit more help. They are fully 
human, they are fully alive, and they deserve life.
    Mr. Keller. Being a father and a grandfather--I have three 
lovely granddaughters--and I will tell you right now that 
holding them for the first time, there wasn't anybody that can 
convince me that wasn't a child or a life prior to birth.
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. I also have three children and 
agree completely.
    Mr. Keller. So, I thank you for being here today. I thank 
you for that opinion, of a great woman who has served so well 
for our Nation. Thank you so much.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from California, Mr. Ro Khanna, is recognized 
for five minutes, and then we will recess for votes. Mr. Ro 
Khanna.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your 
leadership. The overturning of Roe v. Wade means that the state 
is literally requiring women to have forced pregnancies, and 
this is a matter of equality. It impacts a women's education, 
economic opportunities, and securities. Ms. Goss Graves, how 
does legal abortion help ensure work force participation for 
women and reduce the gender pay gap?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, what we know is that if you look over 
time in the last five decades, there has been tremendous 
progress for women, in particular, their ability to control 
when and whether in the pacing of their pregnancies has meant 
that they could enter careers, that they can enter fields that 
they weren't present in before. And when we think about the 
other side and where we are now, what this is likely to mean 
for people is that not that they would have more children than 
they did before. It is just that they would have children when 
they didn't want them and at a time that didn't work for 
themselves and their families. It is likely to put more people 
into deep poverty. And the vast majority, more than 60 percent 
of people who have abortion care, they are already parents, so 
it will affect them and their families deeply.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Ms. Goss Graves. It is so important 
that you emphasize that this is going to make the gender 
inequality worse. And this is fundamentally an issue not just 
of the right to make decisions, but also fundamental equality. 
That's why I think it is an issue under the 14th Amendment.
    Let me turn to you Ms. Lopez. Why is access to abortion so 
important for young people who still are in school or just 
about to enter the work force?
    Ms. Lopez. Thank you. I would first like to state that 
young people have just as much of a right as anyone else to 
exercise bodily autonomy. But it is especially important that 
young people have that autonomy in order to create the lives 
for themselves to thrive, and do, and create the families they 
want on their own terms, and that they are not being forced 
into pregnancy by any government or by any, you know, other 
entity, that they are able to make these decisions themselves. 
And that decision also includes if they decide to continue a 
pregnancy. All pregnancy outcomes should be decided by the 
pregnant person, and the laws should reflect the health and 
safety of pregnant people.
    And I would also just like to state on the record that 
young people, you know, patients also face harassment, 
providers face harassment every single day for providing 
healthcare. And so young people deserve to, you know, access 
abortion care and all of sexual and reproductive healthcare 
free from state intervention or stigma.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Ms. Lopez. Senator McMorrow, thank 
you. I recommend your four-minute speech to everyone. I am sure 
millions of people have already seen it, but I was very moved 
by that. If you could take just 30 seconds, because I have got 
two questions left. But could you speak to the legal abortion 
benefits for mothers in the United States?
    Ms. McMorrow. Absolutely. As I said in my opening 
testimony, Congressman, getting and staying pregnant is 
incredibly difficult. So, I can tell you just some of the 
reaction immediately once the Dobbs decision came down, there 
was a group of local residents on Facebook who created a Google 
document of OBGYNs who will tie your tubes, no questions asked. 
The ability to ensure that abortion access is safe and secure 
means that women and families can pursue pregnancy knowing that 
if it doesn't go perfectly, that they will be OK.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you so much, Senator McMorrow, and I 
appreciate all your advocacy. My final question. Ms. Hawley, I 
read your piece actually on Edmund Burke and stare decisis. I 
disagreed with it, but it was well argued in terms of Burke's 
position. I wonder if there is any possible common ground? 
Surely you would agree with me that in this country, we should 
never prosecute criminally women if they choose to get an 
abortion. Would you agree with that?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. Women should never be prosecuted.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you. I yield back my time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    Votes have been called. To accommodate members' voting, the 
committee is going to take a short recess, and we will 
reconvene 10 minutes following the beginning of the last vote 
in the series. The committee stands in recess.
    [Recess.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. The committee will come to order.
    The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud, is recognized.
    Mr. Cloud. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for 
staying around and working with us on our vote schedule today.
    Our Declaration of Independence was unique in that it 
introduced into the world a profound set of ideals to be 
perfected in subsequent generations. And that was that there 
were certain inalienable rights that were given to mankind, and 
they weren't a grant from government, but they were a gift from 
God. And the Declaration of Independence went on to state that 
among these were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
And it is notable that those ideals upon which the rest of the 
rule of law under which we live is all based on, that first 
essential right, and that is the right to life.
    With the Dobbs decision, in a single day, millions gained 
that right that had been taken away previously. And if we look 
at the development of science over the last 50 years, and I was 
born in 1975, just a couple of years after Roe and ultrasounds 
were very rare. I asked my mom for my ultrasound, and there was 
not one to be found there. There isn't one because of that. And 
when Roe was being argued, even the dialog at the time was that 
it was a blob of tissue that was in development, and we know so 
much more now than we did before. And we know that a child at 
six weeks, we can even detect the heartbeat. We know that 
science is even showing us that a child can feel the pain of an 
abortion.
    And so, there is a lot of misinformation that has happened 
since the Dobbs information that I thought we would need to 
address this. As a matter of fact, the chair said that the 
Dobbs decision was, ``undemocratic.'' Could you speak to, Ms. 
Hawley, the Dobbs decision and if it is undemocratic or not?
    Ms. Hawley. Certainly, Congressman Cloud. The Dobbs 
decision is not anti-democratic. It is an act of judicial 
modesty. It is a decision in which the majority clearly 
explains that the Constitution's text, structure, and history 
are absolutely silent on a right to an abortion. And as Justice 
Alito explained, that means that we, the people, get to debate 
this issue to decide this issue, and the Supreme Court got out 
of the business of legislating abortion.
    Mr. Cloud. So, if anything, it restored a democratic 
process to the discussion of abortion, is it?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. Justice Alito's opinion leaves it 
to the people.
    Mr. Cloud. That is my understanding as well. It was also 
said that pro-life people who embrace this are extremist, 
draconian is how this decision was. We have heard about its 
threat to democracy and all those sorts of things. When we 
talked about extremism and draconian, can you compare where the 
United States stands in relation to other countries when it 
comes to abortion?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. So, under Roe v. Wade, the United 
States was one of the most extreme and most permissive nations 
on abortion in the entire world. We were 1 of only 7 countries 
in the world, including countries like China and North Korea, 
who have horrible human rights records, to allow abortion up 
until the moment of birth for any reason at all.
    Mr. Cloud. So that is a very rare. We are not on the right 
side of that. So, are there any state laws that would prosecute 
women for an abortion?
    Ms. Hawley. There are not, no. There are no state abortion 
laws, no, that would prosecute women for abortion.
    Mr. Cloud. Any Federal?
    Ms. Hawley. No.
    Mr. Cloud. Because we have heard a lot about that. Could 
you speak to ectopic pregnancies and abortion because we keep 
hearing that that is an issue as well?
    Ms. Hawley. Thank you so much for that question. I think 
ectopic pregnancies are an issue of, as you said, 
misinformation. There have been social media posts suggesting 
that women won't get treated for an ectopic pregnancy because 
doctors might be afraid of performing the procedure, but that 
is absolutely false. Treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not, 
in fact, an abortion. An abortion is the intentional taking of 
a human life. An ectopic pregnancy is a tragic situation in 
which the baby is developing outside of the womb, and treatment 
for that, as Planned Parenthood has recognized, is simply not 
an abortion.
    Mr. Cloud. Now, you spoke to what is the norms in the 
world. Both you and I, I think, believe that life begins at 
conception, and this is a question of life, you know, 
ultimately, and that is what makes it so difficult and why the 
views are so deep seated when it comes to this.
    But when it comes to what is normal, the Democrats have 
proposed two bills that we will be voting on Friday: H.R. 8296 
and H.R. 8297. And these bills would, among other things, allow 
for abortion because of disability, what sex the child is, what 
race the child is, potentially. There are provisions in it to 
serve as an end around parents being involved in their child's 
life. There is ambiguous language that can potentially force 
pro-life doctors, many whom their faith would dictate to them 
that this is not a proper thing to do, to perform an abortion. 
And what is troubling to me is, also, we have gone from the 
left from wanting it to be rare, supposedly to now we want 
taxpayers to fund it, not only in our country to pay for other 
people's abortions, but also for abortions overseas.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Cloud. Thank you for your statements today. Thank you 
for being here.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman from California, Ms. 
Porter, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Porter. Madam Chair, I seek unanimous consent to enter 
into the record findings from the Turnaway Study of women who 
sought abortions.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Ms. Porter. Before Dobbs, even under Roe, Americans who 
wanted an abortion were denied. The Turnaway Study examined the 
lives of hundreds of people who were denied abortion and 
compare their experiences to people who got abortions. Ms. Goss 
Graves, are you familiar with the Turnaway Study?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Yes, I am.
    Ms. Porter. I want to use my whiteboard to help Americans 
understand what this study found. Let's start with health. 
Which women were more likely to suffer from physical health 
problems: women who had an abortion or women who were denied an 
abortion?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Women who were denied an abortion.
    Ms. Porter. Women who were denied an abortion. Denying 
abortion does not just correlate with worse physical health but 
also leads to financial problems. Which group of women, those 
who received an abortion or were denied an abortion, were more 
likely to be unemployed?
    Ms. Goss Graves. For sure those who were denied an 
abortion.
    Ms. Porter. Denied an abortion. Which group of women was 
more likely to live in poverty?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Definitely those who were denied abortion.
    Ms. Porter. And which group of women was more likely to 
have low credit scores, to have their applications for housing 
or car loans denied?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Those who were denied an abortion.
    Ms. Porter. So, to summarize, women, when the decision to 
have an abortion was taken out of their hand, and they were not 
able to have an abortion, to make their own decision, they had 
worse health outcomes, were more likely to be unemployed, were 
more likely to face financial problems, like living in poverty 
or having low credit scores. Women who were denied abortions 
are four times more likely to live below the poverty line. They 
are less likely to be able to afford food and housing for 
themselves and their children. Ms. Goss Graves, can you explain 
why people who are denied abortion are more likely to have 
these forced outcomes than someone who obtains an abortion?
    Ms. Goss Graves. If you are denied an abortion, you are not 
having a child based on when you actually want to, and what we 
know is that there is a wide range of reasons people determine 
that it is not the right time to have a child. It could be that 
their health is not the reason that they want to have a child 
at that time, but it also could be because they are not 
financially secure, if they are in a relationship where it does 
not make sense. There are a range of reasons. That is why it is 
so important that that decision be the decision of the person 
who is actually pregnant, the person who is actually going to 
have that child, about whether or not they do that.
    Ms. Porter. Ms. Goss Graves, I completely agree. We should 
let people who are pregnant make the decision whether or not to 
carry that child, to deliver that child, and to raise that 
child.
    I am a mom. I love my three children. I know firsthand the 
joys and hardships carrying, birthing, raising, and providing 
for children, including doing it alone as millions of women do. 
That is why I believe so strongly that extremist politicians 
shouldn't have the power to force anyone to become a parent. 
The choice to give birth is not just a major health decision. 
It is an economic decision for an entire family, including 
other children that that person, that mother or parent may 
have. Many women experienced a significant decrease in their 
incomes after having a child, and income declines even further 
after the birth of additional children. Many parents are forced 
to leave the work force altogether to care for their kids.
    When extremist politicians prevent Americans from making 
their own decisions, they force patients to give birth to 
children that they may not be able to care for, that they may 
not be able to protect and raise safely, and that they may 
force to grow up in poverty. We should live in a free society. 
Americans should have the freedom, the liberty to grow their 
families when they are ready to do so, not birth babies because 
of government mandates. I am here at home, sick with COVID, and 
caring for my two children alone. I do not need, and an 
American women do not need, any politicians telling them when 
and if they should make the decisions to raise children.
    I thank you, Ms. Goss Graves, for your testimony and 
everybody on this panel, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, is now recognized 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Biggs. I thank the Chairwoman. I appreciate the 
opportunity to be here today in this incredibly politically 
charged hearing, and then we get to have another one tomorrow. 
In fact, the Democrats are calling for five hearings in five 
days effectively on this topic. Democrats really are the 
abortion extremists relying on a strategy of fear. That is 
really what it is.
    I associate myself with a video that was put in there, and 
I will say one thing. When Mr. Jordan was asking questions, he 
forgot to ask the questions about bounties put up by ShutDownDC 
on Supreme Court justices. That is absolutely outrageous, and I 
haven't heard any of my colleagues across the aisle, not one 
say, hey, maybe we shouldn't do that, stop doing that. It is an 
incredible, incredible strategy of fear that they are 
perpetuating, and they are extremist.
    Governor Northam said that third trimester abortions are 
done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may 
be a fetus that is non-viable. So, in this particular example, 
if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would 
happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept 
comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that is what 
the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would 
ensue between the physicians and the mother about the outcome 
for that baby.
    I associate myself with the comments of Senator Rubio who 
said that he never thought he would see the day in America 
where America had government officials who openly support legal 
infanticide. Elizabeth Warren, what did she say? She said, ``In 
Massachusetts right now, crisis pregnancy centers, they are 
fooling people who are looking for pregnancy termination. They 
outnumber true abortion clinics by 3 to 1. We need to shut them 
down to Massachusetts. We need to shut them down all around the 
country.'' Wow. That is from the liberal left.
    I will ask a question now of Ms. Hawley. Ms. Hawley, did 
the Dobbs decision shut down abortions completely nationwide?
    Ms. Hawley. The Dobbs decision returned to the state the 
authority finally to be able to protect life. In 1973, a 
majority of men on the Supreme Court declared that no matter 
how compelling a state's interest was in protecting life, no 
matter what we learned about a baby's development, states could 
not protect that life until 22 weeks. With the Dobbs decision, 
a decision of judicial modesty, the people and their elected 
representatives get to make that choice.
    Mr. Biggs. And I am looking now about a recent article in 
The New York Times, ``When it comes to abortion rights, 
Democrats need to lean into the politics of fear. The Party 
needs to scare voters and show that they, too, are scared of 
the voters themselves.'' That is the politics of fear that 
happens here.
    And let's just think for a second, gestational limits on 
abortion in the United States compared to international norms. 
I have got a series of articles on that, and I am going to go 
through this really quickly because time goes by fast. I want 
to give you some European countries. Austria limits to the 
first three months and the rest of these are in weeks: Belgium, 
12; Bulgaria, 12; Croatia, 10; Cyprus, 12; Czech Republic, 12; 
Denmark, 12; Estonia, 11; Latvia, 12; Italy, 12; Hungary, 12; 
Greece, 12; France, 14.
    You know what? America's laws pre-Dobbs were some of the 
most radical on this planet, right up until exit of the birth 
canal. And what has happened since then? The left is okey dokey 
with this strategy of fear and violence. Ohio Right to Life 
says offices targeted twice by pro-abortion activist. Democrats 
have launched ads in lifestyle mags. Summer of Rage. I 
appreciate that someone said 32 or some 40. I have one data, 
June 9, 56 attacks, including one in Bethesda over the weekend. 
Attacks on churches, pro-life pregnancy centers continue. This 
one is in Hutchinson, Kansas. The next one I will submit is 
from Bullhead City in my state.
    The Justice Department has announced that it has a 
reproductive rights task force, and the threat from the left is 
that abortion bans could lose economic edge. That is what The 
New York Times reports. Nothing is further from the truth. This 
is a strategy of fear. It is a strategy of threats and 
intimidation against members of the Supreme Court. It is a 
clinic on disinformation by asserting that this law prevents 
abortion throughout the country.
    Mr. Biggs. Last question for you, Ms. Hawley. Can men 
become pregnant?
    Ms. Hawley. Biological women may become pregnant.
    Mr. Biggs. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlewoman from Missouri, Ms. Bush, is now recognized.
    Ms. Bush. St. Louis and I thank you, Chairwoman Maloney for 
convening this urgent, urgent hearing. Within minutes of the 
far-right Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe and Casey, 
my home state of Missouri was the first state to enact its 
trigger law and ban abortion care. And despite the wrong 
information provided by my colleagues on the other side, there 
are state laws that prosecute people for performing their own 
abortions, which includes trans men. So trans men, more than 
women, trans men and non-binary people do become pregnant.
    The criminalization of abortion care has a ripple effect 
across the healthcare and criminal legal systems. The majority 
of states where abortion care is now banned have threatened to 
enforce criminal laws that target healthcare providers for 
administering medication and providing abortion care to those 
who need it. In Missouri, any provider suspected of inducing an 
abortion could face felony charges and, if convicted, a 
sentence of up to 15 years. In other states like Texas, the 
penalty includes the possibility of a life sentence.
    I have heard from people in St. Louis who tell me that they 
are afraid to cross the state lines to access abortion care 
which they need because they fear being investigated and 
prosecuted at home, but many of these laws exempt pregnant 
people. We know that pregnant outcomes have long been 
politicized, which is happening in this moment and 
criminalized. People have been investigated and punished for 
experiencing pregnancy loss, for struggling with substance use 
during pregnancy, or self-managing abortion care in states 
where abortion care is banned and in states where abortion care 
is legal and protected.
    A local prosecutor in California charged two women with 
murder because of their pregnancy laws. I am concerned that far 
right extremist anti-abortion lawmakers in my own state, like 
our State Attorney General, may move to further politicize our 
rights and criminalize abortion care and pregnancy outcomes 
unless we speak up more, unless we act and act and push harder, 
and until we organize to block extremist anti-human rights laws 
and fully protect reproductive freedom.
    So, Representative Shannon, can you please describe what 
measures are being taken to protect people from being 
criminalized for seeking abortion care in Georgia, it's a red 
state like mine?
    Ms. Shannon. Thank you for the question and thank you for 
your work on this issue. Yes, we have had DAs in Georgia as 
well as local municipalities come out and say that they will 
not use government funds to prosecute folks or to investigate 
folks for having had an abortion should Georgia's 481 law go 
into effect, which would effectively outlaw abortion. And so, I 
am glad that you mentioned about what is going on with 
criminalization because we also, at the same time, have DAs 
across the country who are hyperaggressive about finding ways, 
bending and twisting the law, using other laws to actually 
criminalize folks. And we do know that there has been an uptick 
of criminalization of miscarriages across the country.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you. Thank you so much for those insights 
and thank you for what you do. Ms. Goss Graves, can you please 
explain how the criminalization of abortion creates a public 
health emergency?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, abortion care is both effective and 
safe. What is really, really deeply concerning is if people are 
either afraid to seek medical care if they need it, or if 
providers are chilled, if they are afraid to provide medical 
care, not knowing the state of the law. So, it is those things 
that stand to worsen the health of someone who is seeking 
abortion care. And the other thing that we know is that 
carrying a pregnancy to term and childbirth is inherently 
risky, especially for Black woman. The maternal mortality rates 
are extremely high, so none of these laws will do anything to 
aid that and will only worsen those outcomes.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you for the clarity. I appreciate that. As 
our witnesses have extensively described, the impact of this 
devastating Supreme Court ruling will fall hardest on Black, 
brown, and indigenous communities, people with disabilities, 
undocumented people, queer, and trans folks, youth and the most 
marginalized members of our society. Federal legislators have 
an obligation, all of us who chose, who signed up to take care 
of the full, to serve, to represent, the full--. regardless of 
what you look like, where you come from, how much money you 
have, we signed up to work for everyone. We need to work in 
lockstep with our state and local counterparts to protect 
access to reproductive healthcare for everyone regardless of 
where they live. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. 
Thank you.
    The gentleman from Kansas, Mr. LaTurner.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. The Supreme 
Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health was a 
monumental one. It signifies a victory for pro-life Americans 
across this country, but, most importantly, the innocent 
unborn. But make no mistake, the Dobbs ruling is not just a 
victory for the pro-life movement, but it is a victory for our 
Constitution and for the principle of federalism. If you want 
to have abortion laws in this country to your liking, elect 
officials that agree with you and pass it in the legislative 
body and states throughout this country. That is the way to 
achieve it.
    But let's not pretend that the right to abortion existed in 
our Constitution in this country, and contrary to what some of 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, this decision 
in no way endangers lifesaving medical care for pregnant 
mothers. In fact, the Mississippi statute in question 
explicitly excludes procedures to treat ectopic pregnancies and 
miscarriages from the definition of abortion, and there are 
nearly identical exceptions in every state that has enacted 
pro-life laws. This protection of both unborn children and 
their mothers is what a consistent and compassionate ethic of 
life looks like.
    In my home state of Kansas, citizens will have the 
opportunity this August to vote for the value of them both, a 
constitutional amendment, which rightly reserves the right to 
pass laws regulating abortion to the people through their 
elected representatives. I am a firm supporter of this change 
and hope that the momentum from the historic Dobbs decision 
compels Kansans to restore authority to citizens to decide 
abortion laws. I celebrate the impact of the Supreme Court's 
decision and its implication for the sanctity of human life, 
both for mothers and their unborn children.
    Ms. Hawley, thank you for being here today. In your 
opinion, why is the regulation of abortion better suited for 
state legislatures than the unelected Supreme Court or even us 
here in Congress?
    Ms. Hawley. Well, the state legislatures are very close to 
the people. I think Justice Alito's opinion laid out that 55 
percent of the voters in Mississippi are women, and so those 
voters in Mississippi now have a voice and a vote. They are 
able to tackle these really difficult issues, and we can allow 
women to express their opinions on this issue.
    Mr. LaTurner. There has been a lot of conversation among my 
colleagues on social media and by pro-abortion organizations 
that warn women that their government is tracking their 
activity across health apps and their search history on web 
browsers, and will use that information to seek criminal 
penalties related to abortion. Do any of the Roe trigger laws 
include criminal enforcement mechanisms against women who seek 
abortions?
    Ms. Hawley. No, they do not.
    Mr. LaTurner. What would you say to women who are scared 
they will face criminal penalties for miscarriages, pregnancy 
loss, or ectopic pregnancies, because, as you know, this is a 
real issue and real anxiety, even among those that consider 
themselves pro-life but want exceptions? There is a lot of fear 
mongering going on out there, and I would like you to address 
it.
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. Well, as you mentioned Congressman, 
every state's law has an exception for life of the mother, and 
this means that doctors and physicians will be able to treat 
the mother when her life is in danger. Similarly, the idea that 
treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is an abortion is simply 
false. That is scaremongering. It is untrue. It is a tragedy 
that actually 1 in 50 pregnancies are ectopic pregnancies. 
Women usually find out about this between 6 and 8 weeks, and it 
is a horrible circumstance, but treatment for that is not an 
abortion. There is no intent to take the child's life. There is 
no reason to be worried either as a doctor and physician, or 
especially as a woman.
    Mr. LaTurner. And what do you think damage is caused by 
this fear mongering?
    Ms. Hawley. So, I think, you know, discovering you are 
pregnant, whether it is something you have longed and hoped 
for, or something that is unexpected, can be overwhelming. And 
to have this additional fear mongering on top of that, I think, 
just adds to that uncertainty of women. We need to come 
alongside women and support them. We need to provide them with 
the resources that are necessary for them and their children to 
survive. The Dobbs decision is not only a legal victory, but it 
is a rallying cry. We must become a culture that values life, 
that values women's lives, and provides them with the resources 
they need throughout their pregnancy and beyond.
    Mr. LaTurner. And if I could get you to comment on this--it 
was referenced earlier--the vandalism that has been done 
throughout this country and the intimidation that is being 
attempted. In my home state of Kansas, as I mentioned, we are 
trying to pass them both because our State Supreme Court 
wrongly decided that our 1859 constitution had a right to 
abortion in it, which is absolutely absurd. But we are trying 
to right that, and we have instances in Kansas right now where 
churches are being vandalized. Would you comment on that 
briefly?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. Well, I think you are right that 
the Roe v. Wade decision not only misled the American people by 
imposing a constitutional right to abortion, but also State 
Supreme Court, so hopefully Kansas can rectify that. As far as 
the vandalism----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman from California, Ms. 
Jackie Speier, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Speier. Madam Chair, thank you so much for holding this 
hearing.
    Let me say at the outset to my good friend, Mr. Jordan, to 
others on the Republican side, yes, we deplore violence against 
crisis pregnancy centers. We deplore violence against justices 
and judges. We deplore violence against the institution we call 
the U.S. Capitol. We also deplore violence against abortion 
clinics. And you have said nothing about the fact that 11 
people have been murdered at those clinics: four doctors, two 
clinic employees, one security guard, one police officer, and 
one clinic escort. Last year, there were 186 arsons targeted at 
abortion centers. There were 123 acts of vandalism, 123 
incidents of assault and battery. Stalking increased by 600 
percent last year over 2020. Invasions of abortion facilities 
increased by 129 percent. Assault and batteries increased by 
128 percent and suspicious packages by 163 percent. I did not 
hear one word from any of you deploring and denouncing those 
acts of violence, so you have very selective memories.
    Let me start, Madam Chair by speaking about mothers. I am a 
mother. I am a mother who had an abortion. Fifty-nine percent 
of women in this country who have abortions are mothers. They 
love their children. They want to provide for their children. 
Across this country, women are asking themselves is it even 
safe to get pregnant. This is not hyperbolic. As states 
criminalize abortion, they are also making it illegal to treat 
many pregnancy-related complications. I have had two 
miscarriages. Miscarriages happen a lot, 1 in 5 pregnancies. It 
is often indistinguishable from an induced abortion. It is the 
same procedure, a D&C or a D&E. And the treatment for 
miscarriage is the same as the treatment to induce medical 
abortion. If a miscarriage doesn't progress naturally, which 
could take up to 3 or 4 weeks, a woman may need medication 
abortion, or a D&C, especially if there's signs of infection.
    When I had my first miscarriage, I was told I was going to 
have to wait a period of days before they could give me a D&C. 
I can't begin to tell you what it is like having wanted that 
fetus to become a baby and know that it was dead in my body, 
and I had to walk around with that. I had a mother at a church 
once say to me, ``I had to carry a dead fetus to term for nine 
months.'' We are now living in a country where women will be 
denied miscarriage treatment because doctors will rightly worry 
about whether or not they are going to be thrown in jail for 99 
years. The same goes for providers treating women who are 
seriously ill. If a woman has a 50 percent chance of dying, is 
that sufficient to provide an abortion? How about 20 percent, 
or 10 percent? At what point do we value the life of the woman?
    Ms. Goss Graves, how will criminalizing abortion impact 
patients who are experiencing miscarriage or other pregnancy-
related complications?
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, we are already hearing reports 
on the ground for providers being uncertain about the care that 
they can actually provide when faced with someone who has an 
ectopic pregnancy. And to go back to the point that you raised 
around miscarriage, what is likely to happen is an acceleration 
in miscarriages being investigated. And that might not be 
everyone's experience, but I am telling you it will be the 
experience of people who are more likely to be low income, and 
Black, and brown people. You know, this is a population that 
already has too much unfair contact with the criminal justice 
system. And so, what we will see is going through a miscarriage 
loss turning into a criminal event. Nothing about that helps 
the life or health of a person who is pregnant, and all of it 
chills the actual safe and effective care people need.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you. We are not talking just about 
miscarriages. Senator McMorrow, you have spoken about needing a 
D&C after your IUD punctured your uterus. Can you tell us about 
your experience and what it would have meant for you if 
abortion had been illegal?
    Ms. McMorrow. Yes. After having my daughter, I had an IUD 
placed, and that IUD ruptured through my uterus. It is a very 
rare instance that required me to be scheduled for a 
laparoscopy and a D&C to have it removed. The impact is that I 
could have died if I had not been able to have the procedure to 
have that removed. And we are already hearing from the 
University of Michigan medicine saying that they fear 
training----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired. Very 
moving though.
    The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, you are now 
recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Madam Chair. As we all know, we are 
here today because of the lifesaving decision that the Supreme 
Court made on June 22 in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's 
Healthcare Organization case. This historic decision simply 
restored the rights of voters in each state to allow voting 
citizens to have a say in protecting life.
    I would like to ask unanimous consent to submit for the 
record this article that states that 71 percent of Americans 
support limits on abortion. It is a Fox News article dated 
January 20, 2022.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. The impact of the Supreme Court 
decision in Dobbs will now let the American people decide on 
the issue of abortion. American voters are able to elect 
representatives that they believe best represent their beliefs, 
and I believe they will do exactly that. But Democrats have 
brought us here today to talk about the impact of the Dobbs 
decision, but the impact is exactly what I just said. So, we 
should do away with this hearing and change the focus to things 
that citizens really care about, like rising inflation, rising 
crime, and open borders that are putting the safety and 
security of our families at risk all across the country in 
every state.
    Let me remind you again of the impact of Dobbs. It allows 
American voters to have a say on abortion. That is all it does, 
and that is why Democrats are terrified, and that is why we are 
here today. Which leads me to my first question. Ms. Hawley, 
Democrats seem to think it is a bad thing to let American 
voters have a say on abortion as opposed to having the courts 
say it. If Americans wanted to legalize abortion, wouldn't they 
simply vote for a majority of candidates into office that would 
do that? I mean, is it a bad thing to return it to the states? 
It is not a Federal issue, right?
    Ms. Hawley. Well, I think we can see the extremeness of the 
Democratic pro-abortion position when we look at the Women's 
Health Protection Act. So, if we look at that Act, it permits 
abortion up until the moment of birth for any reason. This is a 
more extreme policy of all but seven countries in the world, 
including China and North Korea, countries that have horrendous 
human rights records. In addition, it allows abortions for any 
reason, including sex, including race. It supersedes every 
single state law. So commonsense provisions that might require 
parental notification, or that might say there are some safety 
and health regulations that apply to abortions, those two are 
gone under this nationally mandated abortion-on-demand-through-
all-9-months-of-pregnancy bill.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. So, I think it is much better that it 
goes back to the states for the people to decide. Ms. Graves, 
you are the president and CEO of the National Women's Law 
Center. I mean, so you are a lawyer, obviously, probably a very 
good one.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I hope so.
    Mr. Clyde. I would hope so, too. Is the word ``abortion'' 
anywhere in the Constitution?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, there are lots of words that aren't 
actually in the Constitution----
    Mr. Clyde. I just asked a question, and I just need a 
``yes'' or ``no'' answer, please. Is the word ``abortion'' 
anywhere in the Constitution?
    Ms. Goss Graves. The word ``abortion'' is not in the 
Constitution.
    Mr. Clyde. It is not. Thank you very much. OK. Earlier this 
year, our new Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was 
asked what a woman is, and she had a difficult time defining 
that. Since you are the president of the National Women's Law 
Center, I was hoping that you could define what a woman is for 
us in this committee hearing.
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, as the President of the National 
Women's Law Center, you can imagine I say women a lot in my day 
job.
    Mr. Clyde. OK. So, I am just asking for the definition.
    Ms. Goss Graves. All right. And so, what I will tell you is 
I am a woman. That is how I identify.
    Mr. Clyde. OK.
    Ms. Goss Graves. But I wonder, however, if, in part, the 
reason that you are asking a question is that you are trying to 
suggest that people----
    Mr. Clyde. I am simply asking a question, and I simply want 
an answer.
    Ms. Goss Graves. And so, I think it is actually really 
important to be very clear here, that there are people who 
identify as non-binary. I think about 5 percent of young 
people----
    Mr. Clyde. OK. All right. We are not going to go there. I 
was hoping that maybe you would say something that maybe we 
learned in high school biology that has to do with X and Y 
chromosomes, which define male and female, but I guess we are 
not going to get there.
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, I don't think that is the legal 
question. I am definitely a lawyer and I think----
    Mr. Clyde. I have another question for you. I saw that in 
your annual report, you previously received money from groups 
like Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Are you still receiving 
funding from Planned Parent Action Fund or any other Planned 
Parenthood Affiliate?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, I certainly support the leadership 
and work of Planned Parenthood. The work they are doing right 
now is hero work. We don't have any----
    Mr. Clyde. Are you receiving money from them or not?
    Ms. Goss Graves. We don't have grants from Planned 
Parenthood, but I support the work they do, the work they do 
around the country----
    Mr. Clyde. Madam Chair, I would ask for unanimous consent 
to submit to the record the annual report of the NWLC, which 
dates a contribution from Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection, and the gentleman's 
time has expired.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you. I thought I had 16 seconds.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. 
Kelly, is now recognized.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Even before the Dobbs 
ruling, the United States was facing [inaudible] crisis with 
the highest maternal mortality rate [inaudible] was equally 
felt. More than [inaudible] died from [inaudible].
    Chairwoman Maloney. We are having trouble with the 
connection, Representative.
    Ms. Kelly. Hmm. Can you not hear?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Now we can hear you better. OK.
    Ms. Kelly. OK. As we know, Black women are 3 to 4 times 
more likely than white women to experience fatal pregnancy 
complications. Ms. Goss Graves, can you speak to why Black 
women are more likely to die during pregnancy, and how will 
Dobbs make this even worse?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, so one of the reasons why the 
maternal mortality rate is higher for Black women is that they 
have less access to healthcare more broadly. They are less 
likely to have access to insurance. But one of the other things 
that we know is that the discrimination and bias that they 
receive in healthcare makes the pregnancies that Black women 
have even more serious. So, when they raise concerns about 
their health, they are not always taken as seriously. And I 
commend the work that this Congress has done to try to deal 
with the maternal mortality crisis in this country. I have such 
deep, deep worries that we will be accelerating on the wrong 
track, especially in states that have ran to ban abortion, 
leaving people without options to decide whether they want to 
have children themselves.
    Ms. Kelly. And we should be especially alarmed and 
concerned that the states with the highest rates of maternal 
mortality, as you have alluded to, have also banned or are 
about to ban abortion, and more women will die as a result. 
Representative Shannon, Georgia has one of the worst mortality
    [inaudible] mortality crises in the country. The anti-
choice politicians who advocate for forced pregnancy, are 
taking any steps to address the maternal mortality crisis in 
your state?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Could you repeat the question? It cut out.
    Ms. Kelly. I am sorry. The anti-choice politicians who 
advocate for forced pregnancy, are they taking any steps to 
address the maternal mortality crisis in your state?
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, some of these folks, once 
pressured and being told that they were not living their values 
of wanting to make sure that everyone has access to healthcare, 
which is what they claimed, they did support the effort that I 
led to expand postpartum Medicaid. But one thing I would like 
to correct on the record, because I have heard this many times, 
the disinformation of how the United States is radical compared 
to other countries. Most countries don't legislate abortion. 
They don't. You know why? Because they know that abortion is 
healthcare, so this is not even something that is even 
legislated in most countries. So that is why you don't see 
that, you know,this is something that is regularly talked about 
because they know that this is not a political issue, and it 
was not a political issue until the 1980's when Republicans 
used it to coalesce their base. So, all the talk about how 
radical the U.S. was in protecting abortion rights is just 
completely false.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you for clearing that up. Maternal 
mortality rates of Black women increased during the pandemic, 
and I am alarmed and enraged that [inaudible] made that 
disparity worse. Current mortality is a public health threat, 
and we need to address it [inaudible] and not forcing women to 
carry pregnancy [inaudible]. I just want to say on the record 
that my constituents and other [inaudible] in Illinois care 
about this issue. They care about inflation, but they care very 
[inaudible] and their rights, and their privacy. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The lady yields back, and the gentleman 
from South Carolina, Mr. Norman, is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Norman. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I find it 
amazing the statement ``abortion is healthcare.'' That is 
totally unbelievable that you are uttering abortion is 
healthcare. Is it healthcare for the child? Is it healthcare 
for that person? To make that statement, it baffles me. Let me 
ask the three of you, and I think I know Ms. Hawley's position, 
but starting with Ms. Lopez. I assume you agree with 
infanticide, the killing of a child, a perfectly healthy child 
at birth?
    Ms. Lopez. I don't accept the basis of that question, but I 
do believe abortion is healthcare.
    Mr. Norman. I know. I get that. But, I mean, do you support 
infanticide, killing the child after he is born?
    Ms. Lopez. I do not agree with the basis of that question, 
but I believe that abortion is healthcare.
    Mr. Norman. What's the basis? OK. So, I will take that as a 
yes, you do agree with infanticide. Ms. Shannon, do you agree 
with infanticide?
    Ms. Shannon. Well, I think you are using inflammatory 
language to basically describe a situation that does not 
happen. We don't have infanticide happening. Doctors would not 
do that, and neither would folks who have carried pregnancy----
    Mr. Norman. OK. Do you agree if a healthy child was born 
that it is that woman's right to decide if it lives or dies?
    Ms. Shannon. What I think is, based on your question, you 
have a very low opinion of pregnant people because if you think 
that anybody would carry----
    Mr. Norman. No, no, answer the question.
    Ms. Shannon. Excuse me. Excuse me.
    Mr. Norman. Answer the question.
    Ms. Shannon. I am answering it.
    Mr. Norman. No, you are not. I would take it that you 
agree----
    Ms. Shannon. Do you want an answer or you want to keep 
talking over witnesses?
    Mr. Norman. No, no.
    Ms. Shannon. What I am telling you is nobody would carry a 
pregnancy and then decide on a Monday because they are bored 
that they want to have an abortion. That is ridiculous, and it 
is inflammatory what you are saying. You are talking about 
families who are in tough situations where folks have been 
excited about carrying a pregnancy. Most of the abortions that 
happen later in pregnancy are really tragedies where it is 
really a disappointment for everyone involved.
    Mr. Norman. I take it with all those words, you do agree 
with basically murdering a child after they are born. Ms. 
Graves, could you answer that? ``Yes'' or ``no?''
    Ms. Goss Graves. I have to say, Congressman, how you just 
characterize the Representative's statement is extremely 
inflammatory and the type of thing that it is dangerous.
    Mr. Norman. And what she is saying----
    Ms. Goss Graves. You guys have been talking today about the 
threats against crisis pregnancy centers, which I assume are 
serious and are terrible.
    Mr. Norman. I have got a limited amount of time. I am not 
letting you----
    Ms. Goss Graves. The threats that people who work on 
abortion access every single day----
    Mr. Norman. Reclaiming my time. I am assuming that you are 
for infanticide.
    Ms. Goss Graves.--and a part of it is because of this sort 
of inflammatory and outrageous language. It is not OK.
    Mr. Norman. I would also say that her language----
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, let the Congressman ask his 
question.
    Chairwoman Maloney. He is reclaiming his time.
    Mr. Norman. I will say this, it is inflammatory when she 
says abortion is health----
    Ms. Goss Graves. The medical procedure is actually 
abortion.
    Mr. Norman. Hold on. I am reclaiming my time. Now, this 
being said, do the three of you all favor doing away with the 
laws on the books? If a mother is carrying a child and his kid 
is shot, is that murder? Is that homicide, or should that be 
abolished, too?
    Ms. Shannon. I don't even----
    Ms. Goss Graves. Homicide for who?
    Ms. Shannon. What law----
    Mr. Norman. If a mother is carrying a child and gets 
murdered, they are charged now, in most every state that I know 
of, double homicide. They killed the mother, and they killed 
the child. Is that right? Do you favor that, or do you want to 
abolish that?
    Ms. Shannon. Well, I will go first. I am glad you brought 
that up.
    Mr. Norman. No, I am asking Ms. Graves first. She is a 
lawyer.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I have no idea. I am and I used to think I 
was a good one, but I have no idea what law you are talking 
about but what I do know----
    Mr. Norman. Do you understand that if a mother is carrying 
a child and gets shot, it happened in Charlotte, North 
Carolina, where a mother was carrying a child.
    Ms. Goss Graves. So that's where----
    Mr. Norman. Hold on. Hold on. A mother was carrying a child 
when she was killed. She was charged with double homicide, 
killing two people. Should that be abolished or not?
    Ms. Goss Graves. One of the most dangerous times is being 
pregnant, and that is----
    Mr. Norman. You are not going to answer the question.
    Ms. Goss Graves.--in part because there is sort of violence 
at pregnant people sometimes.
    Mr. Norman. Look, I have got 53 seconds. Let me just say 
the Dobbs decision was the greatest decision this Supreme Court 
has made. It is federalism versus states' rights. The untruths 
that you all are putting out there, the left is putting out 
about doing away with abortion, the states decide it. And all 
these other things that you are putting out, state abortion 
restrictions would not allow a physician to care for a woman if 
it poses a serious threat to her life, totally false. state 
abortion restrictions mean a woman with an ectopic pregnancy 
must choose between jail or death. It is totally absurd. And, I 
just, the Supreme Court got it right. I hope each state will 
ban abortions, infanticide, which the three of you are in 
agreement with.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I object to that. I am not in agreement 
with infanticide and I want to----
    Mr. Norman. And I object to the fact that you didn't answer
    Ms. Goss Graves.--I am sorry----
    Mr. Norman. None of you answered the question.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Lawrence, is recognized 
for five minutes.
    Ms. Lawrence. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I find it ironic 
that my colleagues on the other side keep talking about giving 
the states the right to choose about abortion, but you want to 
take their right to choose away from a woman who is carrying 
that child who has all of the responsibilities, healthcare, and 
all of that. I find that ironic that choice only works for you 
in certain scenarios.
    I will continue my comments that when you talk about the 
fact of healthcare, obviously you are a man. You are totally 
clueless, or you don't give a darn that when a woman is 
pregnant. That is a health unique situation that requires 
interventions. It requires special treatment. That is why 
doctors obviously specialize and care for pregnant women. It is 
a healthcare issue.
    My question goes to Senator McMorrow. We know that state 
officials, as we keep hearing about the choice, the choice 
going to the states, like yourself, a majority of people in the 
states like Michigan push back against the effort to take our 
constituents back in time. My question is, what are we doing 
and what can states do, because this conversation about just 
the mere fact that having the ability to have healthcare during 
a pregnancy to make a choice is not healthcare shows that we 
are dealing with a population that we cannot educate. Please 
comment on that.
    Ms. McMorrow. Thanks, Senator. And first of all, I am so 
grateful to hear from our Republican Federal colleagues that 
they plan to pass legislation prohibiting partisan 
gerrymandering, because if we are returning this issue to the 
states and state legislatures, we must ensure that people have 
a fair right to elect their choice of elected officials that 
represent their values, because right now in Michigan, and 
courts have ruled as such, that is not the case.
    We are one of the most badly gerrymandered states in the 
country. And all you have to look at is the effort behind the 
ballot initiative, the number of people, volunteers who have 
stood up with collected signatures to challenge the vocal 
extreme minority that are passing legislation against the will 
of the majority. So, we need the Federal Government, our 
colleagues in Congress to ensure that on the local level, every 
single voter is able to elect their candidate of choice that 
aligns with their values.
    Ms. Lawrence. Thank you. I want to ask a similar question 
to Representative Shannon. I understand that Georgia previously 
passed a six-week abortion ban. Now, what steps are officials 
in your state taking to help ensure that Georgian residents are 
able to access abortion care if the six-week ban goes in 
effect?
    Ms. Shannon. So, DAs across the state are saying that they 
will not use funds nor prosecute folks for getting access to 
healthcare, which is abortion, and local municipalities are 
also saying that they will not allow funds to be used to track 
folks or stop anybody from getting access to care.
    Ms. Lawrence. Thank you. I want to use the remainder of my 
time. As a woman, when I gave birth to my second child, for my 
second pregnancy, I began hemorrhaging, and I remember all the 
doctors and nurses running in because my life was in danger. 
And you know, my doctor, who is trained in pregnancy and care 
for pregnant women, he told me that I should not have another 
child because my risk level of a pregnancy would be very, very 
destructive on my body. And I was a married woman, and to say, 
you know, I should not have another child, God blessed me with 
two healthy beautiful children from two pregnancies. But I am 
being told by a medical professional do not have any more 
children, Brenda, we almost lost you today.
    So, for the ignorance and the lack of compassion for women 
who have the amazing opportunity to give birth, to say that 
abortion is not a part of healthcare, because as a married 
woman, if for some chance I had become pregnant, again, what 
will be my options? My husband would have to say let's start 
planning your funeral. I yield back. And I wish to God that 
when we get in our arrogant position of dictating through 
government, that we have respect for women and the respect for 
our ability to make choices on our lives. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The gentlewoman from South Carolina, Ms. Mace, is 
recognized.
    Ms. Mace. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank 
everyone for their time being here today. I am from South 
Carolina that recently implemented a fetal heartbeat bill that 
had exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother because 
I put them in there. It is one of the few states in the Nation 
that has a fetal heartbeat bill, with those exceptions, because 
I told my story of being raped when we were first debating the 
issue just a few years ago. And I hope that the state of South 
Carolina, the legislature, and the Governor keep those 
provisions in there and also do not legislate whether women can 
go to other states or other locations if they so choose from 
the state of South Carolina.
    But in all honesty, I am a constitutional conservative. I 
take the Constitution and my oath of office very, very 
seriously. And even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about 
and discussed the concerns that she had from a constitutional 
perspective on Roe v. Wade for decades. Even Joe Biden, 40-plus 
years ago, was talking about overturning Roe v. Wade. There are 
a number of folks, and it was under President Obama when he had 
a super majority in the House, the Senate, and had the White 
House and said that they would codify Roe v. Wade, and then 
chose not to because the left has used it as a fundraising 
juggernaut for decades rather than take the issue seriously.
    And now we have Supreme Court justices, we have protests, 
and riots, and folks that are showing up armed on the lawns of 
our Supreme Court justices. And whether you are left or right, 
it is the third branch of government, and we should not be 
encouraging these kinds of activities. The United States, and I 
don't want to forget, it is the states, not the courts, that 
are the true laboratories of democracy, and leaders at the 
Federal, state, and local level are elected to represent the 
people in their states. And what Roe does isn't necessarily 
what the media has said or even some of my colleagues have said 
on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It is not going to eliminate 
women's care for ectopic pregnancies as I have heard. I had a 
miscarriage when I was first having my children. It is not 
going to eliminate healthcare for women who have ectopic 
pregnancies or who have miscarriages.
    And I don't know, you know, if you can mention one state 
that is going to eliminate healthcare for women whose lives are 
in danger. One state. Does anybody have one state that is 
trying to say that we are not going to allow any healthcare for 
a woman whose life is in danger? Is there one state that is 
making that a law? Go for it, Ms. Shannon.
    Ms. Shannon. Yes, I would like to weigh in on that, and I 
am just going to tell you what providers told me. When this 
issue came up in Georgia, providers told me that they were 
worried even when you make an exception for the life of the 
pregnant person, that they would be----
    Ms. Mace. Pregnant mother.
    Ms. Shannon. For the pregnant person----
    Ms. Mace. Female, woman, mother?
    Ms. Shannon [continuing]. That they would be challenged as 
to when it is appropriate to make the decision to perform an 
abortion, and so this put fear in doctors. And I will tell you 
this, you live in South Carolina. I don't know what your 
provider situation looks like, but we already have a shortage 
of specialists in Georgia. Over half of George's counties do 
not have access to a OBGYN. We can't afford to lose doctors 
because they feel like they are going to be criminalized or 
sued civilly because they----
    Ms. Mace. But therein lies the debate. You bring up a good 
point. Therein lies the debate today is why so many women 
either don't have access to birth control, don't have access to 
medical care or healthcare, don't have access to understand if 
they want to keep their child, how to give it up for adoption. 
Why are so many women having abortions, why they don't have 
access to care, and that is really what the debate I feel 
should be like.
    I would be remiss today if I didn't mention that some of 
our most important constitutional decisions have overruled 
other prior precedents because there has been some mention by 
folks across the aisle that the Supreme Court is not 
legitimate, but I want to mention a few here. In Brown v. Board 
of Education, 347 U.S. 483, in 1954, the Court repudiated the 
separate but equal doctrine, which allows states to maintain 
racially segregated schools and other facilities. By 
happenstance earlier this week, I visited the Federal 
courthouse in downtown Charleston, where in 1950 was Thurgood 
Marshall, who brought Briggs v. Elliot, arguing that school 
segregation in South Carolina was unconstitutional. This was 
the first case nationwide to challenge school segregation as a 
violation of the U.S. Constitution. That case would eventually 
become Brown v. Board. And the Court has found then, as it has 
found now under Roe v. Wade, it was right and constitutional to 
overturn that particular precedent.
    I appreciate, Madam Chair, for the time today, and I yield 
back.
    Mr. Lynch. [Presiding.] The gentlelady yields.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from 
Vermont, Mr. Welch, for five minutes.
    Mr. Welch. I thank the witnesses, and I thank the chair and 
my colleagues. In Vermont, we have a constitutional amendment 
that we we'll be voting on that would enshrine the right of a 
woman to make her decision about reproductive choice. We have 
passed a law signed by a Republican Governor that would protect 
a woman's right to make that decision.
    Now, I want to say two things. No. 1, I am not aware of our 
U.S. Supreme Court ever passing a law or making a decision that 
took away a right that had existed, in this case reproductive 
freedom under Roe, for 50 years. I am aware of the Court making 
decisions, as they did in Brown v. Board of Education, to 
expand rights that are in the spirit of the Constitution and 
equality under the law, which has been the aspirational goal of 
our Constitution and our Declaration. But it has always been 
about reaching beyond where we were as opposed to taking back 
what had been acknowledged.
    Second, when I returned to Burlington, Vermont, on the day 
of the Court decision, there were demonstrations across 
Vermont, and there have been other times when I have appeared 
at demonstrations when an action taken by a branch of 
government was very upsetting to people in Vermont. And 
oftentimes, I have experienced people's anger at the actions 
that were taken. This one was different. It was fear. It was 
fear. And it was fear about what this meant for a woman's right 
to make her decision about her own reproductive choices. It was 
also fear about the erosion of privacy and what the 
implications were for contraception, same-sex marriage, and a 
whole range of cases that have essentially respected the 
individual's right in the sanctity of his or her privacy 
protection, and that awaits us.
    The second point is that we know that abortion is a very, 
very important topic for everyone. With our witnesses there is 
some disagreement here, and it is a passionately held position. 
But what we had since Roe was an opportunity for people to make 
their own decisions and not impose their decision on someone 
whose decision was different. And what I have seen since the 
Dobbs decision is in our divided society, an escalation in the 
division that is really very dangerous for our country because 
we are seeing legislatures now pass laws that take away a 
right. It is animated by people who not only have made a 
decision that they never want to have an abortion, but who then 
want, through politics, to impose that decision that is theirs 
onto others, and I think we should all be concerned about that 
division. And I am hearing from medical practitioners an 
immense amount of apprehension that they will be second 
guessed.
    Ms. Hawley, I will ask you. Mr. Khanna had asked you about 
whether a woman should ever be prosecuted, and of course you 
answered no, and I really appreciate that. Do you think a 
doctor who performed an abortion based on her medical judgment 
that that was necessary to protect the health of the woman 
should ever be prosecuted?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely not. So, I think there are two 
issues here. Women should never be prosecuted for having an 
abortion. Women are so often harmed by abortion. They suffer 
emotional, physical consequences. Every state allows for 
emergency exception to save life of the mother. Mississippi 
allows that in the physician's best judgment.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Graves, or Professor 
Graves, I think you had mentioned that the Court had never 
taken away a right. Could you just elaborate a little bit on 
that in my remaining time?
    Ms. Goss Graves. This is the first time in our history 
where we have had a court take away an individual right, and I 
think that is exactly why we are seeing this level of legal 
chaos. We have shaped our other laws and systems around the 
idea that abortion was legal in this country. And so, what that 
means is sort of the individual and personal freedom that 
people had to make those decisions, to plan and determine 
whether they have a child are no longer guaranteed to be 
theirs, and the fundamental floors are not state-by-state 
ideas. We are one Nation with one Constitution with a 
fundamental floor.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] The gentleman's time has 
expired.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Comer, 
is recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Hawley, there were 
no women on the Supreme Court when Roe was decided, one woman 
when Casey was decided, and three women when Dobbs was decided. 
Additionally, there are 2,295 women in state legislatures today 
across the country. Women are more represented in government 
today than any time in our history. Members of state 
legislatures are voted into office by their constituents to 
represent their constituents, is that correct?
    Ms. Hawley. That is correct.
    Mr. Comer. The Supreme Court justices are expected to judge 
the law, not public opinion, correct?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely.
    Mr. Comer. So, would you agree that state legislatures are 
the best equipped to regulate abortion based on the beliefs and 
opinions of their constituents?
    Ms. Hawley. So, the Dobbs decision says that because 
abortion is nowhere within the constitutional structure or our 
Nation's history, then the people and their elected 
representatives are allowed to make that choice.
    Mr. Comer. Some websites, such as needabortion.org, are 
cautioning women to avoid crisis pregnancy centers, telling 
them that they are unregulated and unlicensed. Ms. Hawley, are 
pregnancy centers unregulated and unlicensed?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely not, and that makes me sad. We are 
steering people away from organizations that want to help them.
    Mr. Comer. Do they give subpar services to women?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely not. We heard testimony yesterday at 
the Senate hearing that San Francisco's Planned Parenthood 
refers to the pregnancy care center for other services aside 
from abortion.
    Mr. Comer. I agree with that, with your assessment on the 
pregnancy centers. And could you elaborate what services do 
pregnancy crisis centers offer to women and babies after the 
birth of the child?
    Ms. Hawley. Absolutely. So, pregnancy care centers strive 
to come alongside a woman as she is pregnant and beyond. They 
provide, you know, diapers and formula, those sorts of things, 
after birth. They provide educational training. Sometimes they 
will have great fatherhood initiatives. We haven't talked much 
about that. But abortion has made pregnancy and childhood a 
woman's issue. We need the fathers to step up as well. They 
continue with job training services, sometimes they help with 
housing and those sorts of things, and often these workers 
become lifelong friends and mentors. They have the pictures of 
these children up on the refrigerator. It can be a great 
relationship.
    Mr. Comer. That has been what I have gathered. We have 
several really impressive crisis pregnancy centers in Kentucky, 
and in my congressional district, especially the one in 
Henderson, Kentucky, just do magnificent work and appreciate 
everything they do. Let me ask you my last question, Ms. 
Hawley. Radical groups, like Jane's Revenge and Ruth Sent Us, 
have taken credit for vandalizing church and crisis pregnancy 
centers across the Nation. The group has also tweeted locations 
of where Supreme Court justices reside, where they are having 
dinner. They protested outside justices' homes and even 
disrupted church services. Can you, in closing, tell us what 
impact does political violence have on the function of our 
Nation's institutions and on our rule of law?
    Ms. Hawley. Well, I think intimidation and political 
violence is intended to disrupt the rule of law, and we see 
this with the attacks on pregnancy care centers, with the 
threats on justices' lives, on their families. And the name, 
you know, ``Ruth Sent Us'' is so ironic because Justice Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg was herself a critic of Roe v. Wade for the 
reason she said it was a heavy-handled judicial intervention 
that was unnecessary and short-circuited the democratic 
process. In addition, she and Justice Scalia were famously good 
friends. There is a great picture of them riding an elephant 
together, and they demonstrate for us that it is possible to 
disagree and yet be civil.
    Mr. Comer. I think that is a great example. I think I have 
seen pictures of them playing cards together many times, so. 
Well, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate all our 
witnesses being here. Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch, is recognized.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you and 
Ranking Member Comer for holding this very important hearing. I 
also want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for 
your willingness to appear here in person and also to testify 
remotely and to help the committee with its work.
    As a lawmaker, I would like to turn to explore the wider 
legal framework ramifications that this decision in Dobbs v. 
Jacksons Women's Health and the broader impact on the right to 
privacy which the Court had previously held was supported by 
the U.S. Constitution in Roe v. Wade. You know, since it was 
decided in 1973, Roe v. Wade has been cited in more than 4,500 
cases, including more than 140 Supreme Court cases, more than 
2,600 lower Federal court cases, and nearly 2,000 state court 
cases. For nearly 50 years, Roe and its progeny have stood as 
the law of the land, reflecting a delicately determined legal 
balance between the fundamental right of a woman to make a 
decision about her reproductive health, free from unnecessary 
governmental interference and the legitimate interest of the 
state.
    But importantly, Roe also affirmed, and underpinned, and 
solidified the individual right to privacy of every American 
that is derived from the due process clause of the 14th 
amendment. According to the Court, this constitutional 
guarantee to personal privacy includes, ``only personal rights 
that can be deemed fundamental or implicit in the concept of 
ordered liberty.'' And it also extends to activities related to 
marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships and 
child rearing, and education. In overruling Roe and 
disregarding five decades of carefully deliberated precedent, 
Justice Alito's majority opinion assures, nonetheless, that 
nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on 
other precedents that do not concern abortion. But given the 
indispensable role of Roe, and its line of cases, and our 
rights to privacy framework, I am not so sure about that.
    Ms. Goss Graves, Justice Alito's majority opinion takes 
great pains to distinguish the right to abortion from other 
privacy-related rights. In stark contrast, the National Women's 
Law Center, your institution, has warned that Dobbs ``lays out 
a roadmap for eviscerating other important rights.'' I would 
like you to talk about that, about the wider impacts, that this 
decision impacts those wider rights, those privacy rights.
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, our first major concern is that it 
upends the idea of the right to privacy. As you named, the 
right to privacy had been articulated before Roe and has been 
built upon following Roe, whether you are talking about 
contraception, or intimate relationships, or same sex-marriage 
more recently. But the other thing that was deeply concerning 
about Justice Alito's opinion is he basically says that if it 
was not a right that was well-grounded in our Nation's history 
at the time of the 14th Amendment, it is not one that should be 
afforded respect. Well, women, at the time of the 14th 
Amendment could not practice law, could not have lines of 
credit, couldn't own property separate from their husband's, 
you know. So, if we have to go back to the rights that women 
had in terms of controlling our lives and future and destiny, 
we are all in trouble at that time.
    And then the last thing that I will just say is that 
totally missing from a lot of the conversation today, but 
certainly Justice Alito's opinion, is the right to control your 
own body and make decisions about your own body. That is not a 
small idea. It is a giant idea and is not a small idea to just 
stay pregnant or be forced to give birth. That is a traumatic 
idea for people in this country.
    Mr. Lynch. Yes, one would think that if there is a right to 
privacy. And also, Justice Alito in his opinion at page nine 
says that abortion was not recognized in the Constitution, but 
he adds neither was privacy. And it just causes me to wonder 
that if the relationship between a woman and her doctor about 
her health, if that is not within the right to privacy, I am 
not sure I can imagine anything that is, and that causes me 
great concern as well.
    Well, my time has expired. I want to thank you all for your 
attendance here and your willingness to help the committee with 
its work. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney.--back.
    And the gentlewoman from Ohio, Ms. Brown, is now recognized 
for questions.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking Member 
Comer, for holding this hearing. It is important to acknowledge 
that abortion bans and restriction do not affect all people 
equally. Ms. Graves, can you explain how abortion bans and 
restrictions impact women of color in particular?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, women of color are disproportionately 
residing in the states that are banning abortion, so that is 
the first thing to think about. But even if you go beyond 
there, right now you are going to have sort of two different 
situations. It is either that people are going to be able to 
get access to medication, abortion, or they are going to be 
able to travel. Each of those things put additional hurdles 
that are going to come down on people very, very differently. 
It is not a small idea to just pick up and travel to get your 
own healthcare. It requires you to take time off, which women 
of color are less likely to have. It might require you to 
arrange childcare for the children you already have.
    But the last point is that we should not be confused about 
the criminal penalties that are going to come to not just 
providers, but to people who are seeking care and anyone who 
helps them. The states around the country are not saying the 
things that I have heard today in this hearing room about how 
there won't be any criminal punishment. They are saying the 
exact opposite and passing laws with many, many years of 
criminal punishment attachment.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you. As you explained, when we discussed 
the health impacts of abortion restrictions, we must also 
address the structural racism faced by people of color in our 
medical system. Across the United States, communities of color 
experience systemic health disparities, including higher rates 
of uninsurance and stigma. Maternal health outcomes are also 
directly correlated with race. As we have heard a number of 
times in this hearing, Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely 
to die in childbirth, and if you are in Mississippi, that is 
exponentially higher. Ms. Goss Graves, how do laws that force 
people to continue their pregnancies present unique health 
threats to people of color?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, you have to start with the fact 
that, as you name, the access that people of color have to 
healthcare just full stop. Right now, healthcare isn't readily 
available in every community. People aren't always covered in 
terms of insurance. Not every state has expanded Medicaid to 
meet the needs of the lowest-income folks. So, we already are 
in a situation where healthcare access is worse. And so, if you 
don't have an ability to decide whether or not you terminate a 
pregnancy on your own terms, what we know from the studies is 
that it is likely to have worse health and potentially life 
outcomes for that person. That is going to disproportionately 
affect people of color who already have less access to 
healthcare.
    Ms. Brown. And I think it is also important to note that 
many minimum wage workers are women, and especially, 
specifically women of color, a disparity this committee has 
taken on as it is working to address. But for people with less 
income, the costs associated with abortion care, which you 
touched on, includes the cost of the procedure itself, 
transportation costs, childcare, and taking days off from work, 
already pose barriers to receiving it. State restrictions that 
force pregnant people to travel long distances to see a 
provider, make abortion care even more unaffordable.
    Representative Shannon, how will the ripple effect of 
abortion's ban on access to other reproductive health services 
particularly impact people of color?
    Ms. Shannon. Well, as I mentioned before in my initial 
testimony, outlawing abortion would basically amount to folks 
who have resources would be able to get access to care, which 
we know that Black and brown folks are disproportionately 
represented in the number of folks who make minimum wage 
throughout the country. So, it is going to boil down to do you 
have the financial resources, do you have childcare, do you 
have the wherewithal to be able to travel to another state to 
get care, potentially have to stay, you know, for a period of 
time. And so, all of these things are things that folks of 
color will be less likely to be able to access.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you. So, I think it is pretty clear, 
people of color already face racial and ethnic disparities 
related to other health outcomes from diabetes to 
cardiovascular disease and breast cancer. Draconian abortion 
bans and restrictions that force people to remain pregnant 
further entrench the health disparities faced by communities of 
color. So, it is my feeling, it is our moral obligation to do 
whatever we can to lift up historically marginalized 
communities that look like me, and this includes protecting and 
expanding abortion access.
    So, with that, every person deserves the opportunity to 
make their own decisions about their body and their future. And 
with that I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Connolly, is recognized.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair, and I thank you so much 
for holding this hearing, and welcome to our panel. Professor 
Goodwin, you there? All right. Ms. Goss Graves, do you remember 
your constitutional history? So, Ms. Hawley tells us, citing 
Justice Alito, there is no provision in the Constitution that 
says there is a right to an abortion. Show me in the 
Constitution where the founders in writing the Constitution 
granted the right to the Supreme Court to review and nullify 
legislation passed by the Congress or any other legislative 
body in America. Does that language exist in the Constitution?
    Ms. Goss Graves. It is not how our Constitution is----
    Mr. Connolly. No, it does not exist at all. So, by Mr. 
Alito and Ms. Hawley's own logic, this opinion is questionable 
based on the Constitution. In fact, do you remember when the 
first time the right to review legislation or the legislative 
actions of a legislative body was ever asserted by the Supreme 
Court? 1804, Marbury v. Madison, and it was made up by John 
Marshall, made up out of whole cloth. He said it was an implied 
power.
    Ms. Hawley. If I may.
    Mr. Connolly. No, ma'am. Do you remember the first time, in 
fact, they used that power they asserted in 1804, because I 
think it is relevant. Dred Scott, 1857. That is the first time 
in American history a Supreme Court overruled, nullified 
legislation passed by the Congress of the United States. How 
did that work out for us? It led directly to the Civil War, 
directly, because it overturned the Compromise of 1850, and it 
asserted that no Black man or woman, freed or otherwise, had 
the same rights as a white person. They could never be a full 
citizen of the United States, a wretched and reprehensible 
decision. And the Court sadly, along with Brown v. Board of 
Education, which was a good decision, has a long history, 
Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu, lots of other decisions that 
tragically discriminated, in some cases, almost violently 
against groups of Americans.
    Now, in this case, it is half the population, and despite 
what Ms. Hawley said, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ms. Hawley said she 
questioned Roe v. Wade. She did, but she questioned the basis 
of it. She thought viability was an inferior argument compared 
to equality--equality--that men and women had the same controls 
of their own body and should. And oh, by the way, for the 
record, it may be true that Ruth Bader Ginsburg played cards 
with, dined with, and went to the opera with Antonin Scalia, 
but she got up in the morning and voted against him in every 
single case involving the rights of women to have choice. She 
upheld Roe v. Wade during the entirety of her time in the 
Supreme Court. Is that not correct, Ms. Graves?
    Ms. Goss Graves. That is absolutely correct.
    Mr. Connolly. So, what about this equality thing? So, do 
men have restrictions? Has the Supreme Court said, men, here 
are some limitations on what control you have over your own 
body? Any of them? I can't recall.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I don't know of any.
    Mr. Connolly. You don't know of any. So let us just for the 
sake of argument say, in fact there are none. With respect to 
women with this decision, it is a pretty fundamental 
restriction on their bodies and what they can do with them. Is 
that correct?
    Ms. Goss Graves. For sure.
    Mr. Connolly. Now, we have heard a lot of interesting talk 
about states' rights and when life begins and so forth and so 
on. Is it possible, now that we are going to revert to pre-Roe 
and the chaos that reigned that, by the way, led to Justice 
Blackmun, a Republican-appointed conservative justice, deciding 
we had to have a universal standard and a basic standard that 
was a right in 1973, is it now possible that women could be 
criminalized and/or medical providers criminalized by some 
states, maybe even Ms. Hawley's own state of Missouri?
    Ms. Goss Graves. We have already had women who have been 
investigated and charge for their own miscarriages, and so I--
--
    Mr. Connolly. I am sorry, did you say miscarriage? Somebody 
could be charged with a crime for a miscarriage?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, that has already happened, right. 
So, we have already had that happen. The way that these laws 
are written in the states that have rapidly passed them, they 
would open up individuals, providers, and others who help them 
seek abortion care to criminal and civil penalties.
    Mr. Connolly. Astounding. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. 
Donalds, is recognized for five minutes. Is he here? On screen. 
OK. Mr. Donalds.
    Mr. Donalds. [Inaudible.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. We can't hear you. You have got to 
unmute. We can't hear you. We can't hear you. Well, we----
    Mr. Donalds. You got me now----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Got it. OK.
    Mr. Donalds. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. My 
apologies for the technical difficulties.
    My question is actually quite simple. It actually is not 
really a question. Ms. Hawley, obviously considering the last 
round of questioning, I wanted to actually yield you as much 
time as you need, four minutes and 46 seconds, or whatever you 
choose to use to actually respond to some of the previous 
testimony in this hearing.
    Ms. Hawley. Thank you, Congressman, a few points. The Dobbs 
decision was a decision of judicial humility. It is a humble 
decision to realize that the Supreme Court erred in 1973 when 
it invented out of whole cloth a right to an abortion. Justice 
Alito's opinion is meticulous. It explores every right that has 
been suggested, including the equal protection right suggested 
by Justice Ginsburg. There are literally law review articles, 
law review books devoted to what Roe should have said, and no 
one has been able to come up with an answer that is 
satisfactory because there simply is no right to an abortion in 
the United States Constitution. And when the Constitution says 
nothing about abortion, as Justice Alito said, then that is an 
issue for the democratic process. It is an issue for the states 
and for the people. And in addition, this is something that 
protects us as American people. We don't want a system of 
government in which five justices who are unelected, however 
well-meaning they may be, are able to make up things out of 
whole cloth out of the Constitution.
    And then the last thing I would like to say is that there 
is no state law in the country, none, zero, that criminalizes 
women for having an abortion. We realize that this is a tough 
spot that a lot of women may be in. We want to come alongside 
them and support them, and zero states criminalize the woman 
for that decision. In addition, zero states criminalize a 
physician, who, in his or her determination, believes that a 
woman needs an abortion in order to have life.
    Mr. Donalds. Thank you for that response. A quick question, 
Ms. Graves. You mentioned briefly that there was an example of 
somebody who was charged or potentially was charged over a 
miscarriage. What are the specifics around that example that 
you cited?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, you may have seen recently in 
California, local prosecutors had filed charges against women 
who were investigated for their miscarriages, that, you know, 
this is even before the fall of Roe and the Dobbs decision. The 
thing is, you know, in this hearing room there have been a 
playing fast and loose with medical terms----
    Mr. Donalds. Ms. Graves, one quick point. One quick point, 
Ms. Graves. This is a point of clarity. Just as a point of 
clarity. So, the example of----
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, there have been over a thousand people 
who have been charged.
    Mr. Donalds [continuing]. In the state of California before 
the Dobbs decision?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Even before the Dobbs decision, the 
question of miscarriage and the investigation into miscarriage 
is a thing that women and anyone who is pregnant would have to 
deal with. There have been over a thousand people who have been 
criminally investigated for their pregnancy outcomes. The thing 
that I think is important for people to understand here is that 
the medical procedure of abortion applies to multiple types of 
situations. I am not sure why in this room people are 
suggesting that abortion isn't healthcare. It is. Abortion is 
healthcare. It is on the range of reproductive healthcare that 
people receive in this country. The only question is, will it 
continue to be safe and effective, and will we be investigated 
and criminalized for it, either patients or the providers who 
provide that care. And the laws that states are----
    Mr. Donalds. Ms. Graves, is there a state in the country 
right now that is seeking to criminalize or having legislation 
made to criminalize people who seek an abortion, women who seek 
an abortion?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, people will also be self-managing 
their own abortions, and they will fall under the statutes 
which do provide fundamental penalties.
    Mr. Donalds. Ms. Graves, is there a state in the union that 
is drafting legislation to criminalize who seek abortion?
    Ms. Goss Graves. There are states in the union that already 
have this legislation, that have already been triggered into 
effect right now.
    Mr. Donalds. Ms. Hawley, do you have any comment on that?
    Ms. Goss Graves. And maybe you are misunderstanding the 
point that some people will travel to other providers and some 
people will self-manage their own care. Each of those people 
and the people who help them will find themselves in a web of 
criminal and civil penalties for doing what was perfectly legal 
over the last five decades.
    Ms. Hawley. If I may, I think you asked me a question.
    Mr. Donalds. Well, yes. With the essence of time, I am 
going to yield the time, I am a little over----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    OK. The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, is now 
recognized.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Make no mistake about 
it, this is not about states' rights. The Dobbs decision is not 
about states' rights. It is about taking away the people's 
reproductive freedom while at the same time denying poor women 
access to healthcare. Representative Shannon, what have you 
seen on the ground across Georgia with respect to the 
availability of and accessibility to providers who can 
prescribe family planning services, such as birth control and 
long-acting contraceptives, and how will an abortion ban on 
Georgia affect the availability of these services?
    Ms. Shannon. Thank you for the question. As I mentioned 
before in the testimony, and I know you know this because you 
represent Georgia, that most of the resources are located in 
the Metro area, which is the Atlanta area, which gets most of 
the attention, you know, in the country. People think that that 
is what Georgia is all about, and it is not. Most of the state 
does not have access to healthcare, and so, that is an issue 
when you are thinking about having access to family planning, 
family planning tools.
    But also let me just state this. Contraception is not the 
same as abortion contraception. Contraception is used to 
prevent a pregnancy, and abortion is used to terminate a 
pregnancy. So, we can't pretend that if we just make sure that 
birth control is over the counter and free, we will not have a 
need for an abortion. The two are totally different things. But 
thank you for the question.
    Mr. Johnson. But isn't it a fact that dispensers of 
contraceptives also provide abortion services, and so without 
the availability of abortion services, you are going to be even 
more constrained in the ability to get access to 
contraceptives?
    Ms. Shannon. For some clinics, that is absolutely true, and 
thank you for bringing that up.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Senator McMorrow, what would be the 
impact of a ban on abortion in Michigan? What would a ban on 
abortion in Michigan have? What impact would it have on the 
ability of Michigan's rural and poor women, in particular, to 
have access to nearby reproductive health services?
    Ms. McMorrow. That is a great question. I mean, right now, 
it is already a challenge. I mentioned in my opening testimony 
there are only four providers in Metro Detroit. That is where a 
majority of the population lives that could provide the care 
that my constituents needed. It is nearly impossible already to 
be able to find that emergency medical care in rural 
[inaudible] State Michigan. That will only become worse if our 
1931 law goes into effect and will be impossible for women and 
families and anybody who needs to access the care to be able to 
find that near them.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Mrs. Graves, in 2019, Georgia's 
Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, signed a bill effectively 
outlawing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. A Federal 
judge struck down the law last summer, but after the Supreme 
Court overturned Roe, Georgia's Republican attorney general, 
Chris Carr, has asked a Federal appeals court to let the 
Georgia law take effect. How will ending access to abortion in 
Georgia impact the entire Southeast, not just Georgia?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Yes. You know, one of the challenges that 
we have is that we are already in a situation where most of the 
South has banned abortion. And so, people who are traveling are 
already having to travel hundreds if not thousands of miles to 
access care, and that is mostly and disproportionately people 
of color because people of color are more likely to live in the 
South. So, what is happening in Georgia is not just a problem 
for Georgia. It is a problem throughout that region. And it 
also puts an additional strain on the places that have 
continued to provide the freedom to decide whether or not you 
are going to parent. So places, you know, like Maryland, places 
like D.C. that are now having a disproportionate amount of 
people who are coming to seek care here.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you. And Ms. Graves between 1990 and 
2013, restrictions on abortion caused the national maternal 
mortality rate to increase by 136 percent. Should we expect to 
see high increases like this in maternal mortality once again 
now that Roe v. Wade has been overruled?
    Ms. Goss Graves. I think that is where we are heading, and 
we should all be worried about it.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Davis, is now recognized.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I also want to 
thank all of the witnesses who have been here for much of the 
day.
    For more than 40 years, the Hyde Amendment has restricted 
Federal funds from being used to pay for abortion services. 
States can choose to allow their own Medicaid funds to be used 
for abortion, but only 16 states currently do so, meaning that 
in 34 states and the District of Columbia, people with Medicaid 
coverage have to pay for their own abortion care. Mr. Goss 
Graves, how does having to pay for your own abortion care 
actually affect these women?
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, for some people it means that they 
are not going to get care at all, because they can't afford it. 
And now we are in a situation where on top of the actual 
medical services, we have to take into account the cost of 
travel, the cost of taking time off of work, the cost for 
supporting families who were involved with making this all 
possible.
    Mr. Davis. And so, these states realize the difficulty, the 
lack of funds, the lack of resources, and lack of services have 
denied or are, in fact, denying their residents and their 
citizens of a basic health service.
    Ms. Goss Graves. I mean, if you match up the states that 
raced to ban abortion first, you find that they are also the 
states, many of which have not expanded Medicaid. They are also 
the states that do not have paid leave programs. This is not an 
agenda that is supporting women or supporting families at all.
    Mr. Davis. Representative Shannon, what would it mean for 
the people in Georgia to be able to use Federal Medicaid funds 
to pay for abortion service?
    Ms. Shannon. Did you ask me what would be the effect if 
they were able to use Federal funds to pay for abortion?
    Mr. Davis. Yes. I mean, how----
    Ms. Shannon. Well, simply put, it would allow folks to have 
access to healthcare. So as Ms. Graves just mentioned, right 
now, depending on the state you live in, if you cannot cash pay 
for an abortion, you will not be receiving access to 
healthcare, which I would add, you know, because we know 
abortion is healthcare, you are not able to get that initial 
abortion. Forcing people to carry an unwanted pregnancy, 
regardless of the reasons that they are having to, contributes 
to morbidity and also poor health outcomes. So, you are 
actually creating larger medical bills down the road 
potentially.
    Mr. Davis. Yes. I would think it would be like bringing 
light to darkness. I can recall living in rural America before 
the REA, and when things lit up, it was just totally different. 
Well, as we have heard, the Hyde Amendment is an unnecessary 
barrier to abortion care for people across the country, and 
repealing Hyde is a critical step in achieving economic and 
reproductive justice.
    I am a proud original sponsor of Representative Barbara 
Lee's EACH Act, which would repeal this discriminatory policy. 
And last year, the House passed the first spending package in 
more than 40 years that did not include the Hyde Amendment. Of 
course, we have complimented ourselves for that, and I would 
urge the Senate to follow our example and repeal this outdated 
amendment once and for all. I thank you for your presence and 
your answers. I yield back, Madam Chairman.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to 
thank all of you again for your testimony. And I want to focus 
my line of questioning on so-called crisis pregnancy centers 
and the outside role that they may play as the Dobbs decision 
pushes abortion care further out of reach for millions of 
people. For anyone unfamiliar with crisis pregnancy centers, or 
CPCs, they are systems of fake health clinics that are heavily 
clustered in Southern states. My question, Ms. Goss Graves, is, 
can you just explain what these fake health clinics are and how 
they promote an anti-abortion agenda?
    Ms. Goss Graves. So, someone may show up at a crisis 
pregnancy center believing that they are going to a place that 
can help facilitate access to abortion and be totally fooled. 
And one of the reasons why they have gotten the moniker of sort 
of fake clinics is that some of them have purported to actually 
provide health services that they do not provide. So, if you 
are someone who is trying to access abortion, you are on a 
clock, more so in states that have restricted abortion care 
earlier and earlier. So, one of the ways is by convincing 
people to sort of be with them and stay in their system, and 
what ends up happening is people miss out on the care that they 
actually are seeking.
    So, you know, I have to say though, about these clinics, 
there is nothing that prevented them from providing the 
services that they provide consistent with Roe being around. 
They didn't have to wait until Dobbs struck down Roe v. Wade to 
provide access to diapers or whatever other small support they 
were providing for someone upon a transition into parenthood, 
and that is true more broadly. We will be now facing a much 
more giant crisis where accurate information is going to be so 
very critical. And so, I am hoping that this body and others 
will look really clearly at what sort of information people are 
providing in the name of healthcare at this time where there is 
so much deep confusion.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. I want to discuss 
proportion because there are an estimated 2,500 crisis 
pregnancy centers in the United States, and they outnumber 
abortion providers by a ratio of 3 to 1. My home state of 
Florida has the second highest number in the country, just 
trailing Texas, at 150 CPCs compared to just 65 abortion 
clinics. Now, Ms. Goss Graves, Florida remains for now one of 
the last safe havens for abortion access in the South. How do 
all these CPCs in Florida make it even harder to travel for 
abortion care? I know during in last year's committee hearing 
on Texas's six-week abortion ban, we heard a first-hand account 
from a woman who unknowingly walked into a crisis pregnancy 
center when she was seeking abortion care.
    Ms. Goss Graves. Well, what it means is that there will be 
people traveling to Florida to seek care who don't know Florida 
as well. And so, they might find themselves stumbling into a 
crisis pregnancy center when they meant to stumble into someone 
who could provide them with abortion services, and that would 
be unfortunate. Again, we are on a clock here for someone to be 
forced to remain pregnant, given bad information about their 
own health, the state of their pregnancy or about abortion 
services. What we need in this time of chaos is accurate, 
medically accurate, and legally accurate information. That is 
what people need the most.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Right, and that is exactly what I 
want to hit on. CPCs advertise themselves as legitimate health 
clinics, but staff often had no medical training, and they make 
scientifically baseless claims to pregnant people to scare them 
out of getting an abortion. Is Representative Shannon still 
with us?
    Ms. Shannon. I am here.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. I mean, I want to ask you, is it 
possible that residents in states like yours, in Florida or 
Texas, who have to travel longer distances for abortion care, 
are more likely to end up at a CPC closer to their home?
    Ms. Shannon. Absolutely, and this is one of the reasons 
that I sponsored legislation my second year in office to get 
rid of our CPC program because, to your point, these are 
misleading centers. We are not using hyperbole here. In our 
enabling legislation in Georgia, it literally said that the CPC 
program, which gives $2 million annually to CPCs, would only go 
to places that their stated purpose was to dissuade people from 
having abortions. So, yes, CPC centers have gotten better over 
time as far as providing some services, but it is still the 
case that they literally only exist just to talk people out of 
having abortions that they know they want to have, that they 
want to have.
    I had an abortion 20 years ago, actually lived in Florida 
when that happened. It is a decision I don't regret. And I 
think it is really important that when people know that they 
want to have an abortion, that they be able to get that care 
without being distracted, and, as Ms. Graves mentioned before, 
basically running out the clock, which will make it difficult 
for them to get the care that they know that they already want.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's times has expired.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, that is why I am an 
original cosponsor of your bill, the Stop Anti-Abortion 
Disinformation Act, that crackdown on false advertising related 
to abortion services. And the last thing that pregnant people 
need now are additional forces actively trying to suppress 
their right to care. I yield back the balance of my time and 
thank you for this important hearing.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you, and the gentleman from 
California, Vice Chair Gomez, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, before I start on 
my more formal remarks, I want to kind of address, I was here 
for the opening statements by the ranking member, and he made 
some comments that the Democrats are trying to destroy 
democratic institutions, and that we don't respect process. And 
this is coming from the same side of the aisle when it came to 
January 6th, that they didn't speak up. They didn't vote to 
impeach the former President. They haven't held him 
accountable. They didn't even want to put anybody on the 
January 6 commission. This is the same group of folks, right, 
that don't believe in the institution. They didn't believe in 
the peaceful transfer of power. Even one person on the other 
side of the aisle on this committee said it was a normal 
tourist visit.
    As my colleagues and I were laying on the floor on the 
gallery, with cops above us with guns drawn, we were still 
sitting there. But, no, they don't want to call out that 
violence that almost overthrew our democracy in our country. 
They are OK with that, and they wanted to provide a different 
set of electors, but they are OK with that. So, I think it is 
very disingenuous when they say that we are the ones that don't 
respect our institutions. We respect our institutions, but we 
also recognize that our institutions and the individuals that 
are placed there have a responsibility to live up to the 
Constitution, not to their political party.
    They also make a claim that it is about life and freedom. 
Well, these are the same folks that if you really kind of dig 
down, it is not about life or freedom. It is about control, 
right, because if it was about life, they would take a look at 
a lot of their own states, right? What about their states? 
Well, if you really look at it, the maternal mortality rate is 
highest in top 10 states: Louisiana, Georgia, Indiana, New 
Jersey, Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, South Carolina, and 
Arizona. We have 1 blue state out of 10. But then when they get 
a chance to support life of mothers, they always vote no. When 
they had a chance to increase the child tax credit that reduced 
poverty from 40 to 60 percent in this country that brought kids 
out of poverty, they voted no. When it comes to paid family 
leave, they vote no. When it comes to expanding the ACA, they 
vote no.
    And if you look at the same states that are pulling back on 
abortion rights and the right to privacy--that is what it is 
really about, the right to control your own body--are the same 
12 states, roughly, that also refused to expand the Affordable 
Care Act, Medicaid. So, for them, they are claiming it is about 
life. No, it is not about life. It is about controlling women, 
LGBTQ individuals. It is about controlling individuals that 
don't look like them, don't agree with them, and don't have the 
same values as them. That is what it is about. And when they 
say, well, you are using fear to mobilize the public, it is not 
fear, it is a fact. Thomas said in future cases the Court 
should reconsider Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, basically 
dealing with contraception, same-sex relationship, and same-sex 
marriage.
    If they kept the majority in the House and the Senate, they 
will pass laws that will outlaw abortion rights throughout this 
country. No doubt about it. It is not fear. It is fact, and 
this is what we are dealing with. And the people that are most 
likely to suffer are Black, brown, indigenous, LGBTQ 
individuals, and undocumented individuals throughout the 
country.
    So, for the panel, what do you say when these, my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, claim that they are 
pro-life, to Ms. Goss?
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, I think there are a lot of 
things you could do in support of life: the gun reforms that 
would actually make it safe for my children to be in school, 
that is in support of life, paid leave, doing things to 
increase the maternal outcomes. There is a long agenda. Many of 
it was in Build Back Better, which not many of the folks in 
this room I don't think supported. So, there are a lot of 
things that would be in support of the well-being and security 
of all people in this country that don't seem to be their 
agenda.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, may I respond to what the gentleman 
just said about my opening remarks?
    Chairwoman Maloney. We will give you time at the end. We 
are almost at the end. Let us get through the panelists. There 
are members that are still waiting all day to ask their 
questions.
    The gentleman from California, Mr. DeSaulnier, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you 
to the panel and everybody who is stuck with it. So, I will get 
right to the questions because I know we are anxious to wrap up 
this hearing.
    I want to talk about the disability community and how 
disproportionately they are affected. Those impacted include a 
lot of people like Robin Wilson-Beattie, who now lives in the 
Bay Area, not far from my district, and made the difficult 
decision to terminate a pregnancy in 2007. Had she not 
terminated a pregnancy, complications would have endangered her 
ability to care for her young son. The stigma and draconian 
laws that Robin faced in Georgia were traumatizing. And efforts 
for anti-abortion extremists will further harm people like 
Robin who face the tough and deeply personal decisions about 
their reproductive healthcare. Further, because many people who 
live with disabilities rely on Medicaid for their essential 
healthcare needs, state and Federal restrictions of Medicaid 
coverage of abortion are particularly harmful to this 
community.
    Ms. McMorrow, how can those of us working to expand 
healthcare access ensure that people living with disabilities 
are not overlooked as they currently fear they will be?
    Ms. McMorrow. Thank you Congressman. I really appreciate 
the question because, as I said in my opening remarks, it is 
really challenging for many people to get pregnant and to stay 
pregnant safely, and that is especially true for those in the 
disability community. And it ultimately comes down to this is a 
healthcare decision between an individual, and a family, and 
their medical provider. Every single situation is different. 
Right now, the way that Michigan's 1931 law is written, and our 
attorney general has mentioned this, there is an exception for 
imminent danger of death to a mother, but that is not defined. 
So, it goes back to that issue. Is it 50 percent? Is it 80 
percent? Is it 20 percent?
    It doesn't factor in mental health. It doesn't factor in 
the issue you brought up of putting at risk either the ability 
to conceive again or to care for existing family. So 
ultimately, I think all of us, in the most compassionate way, 
need to work as hard as possible to ensure that this care is 
safe and accessible and is a decision that medical providers 
can make without arbitrary hurdles with their patients.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Let me followup with that. This population, 
having been involved with them for many years, they have so 
many challenges. California, where I live, since Pat Brown was 
Governor, really has been at the forefront of mainstreaming 
people with disabilities. They are very sophisticated about 
dealing with the healthcare system, both medical and behavioral 
health and their families and support groups, but this is just 
one more thing. Could you respond to that?
    Ms. McMorrow. It is. And it just comes down to we have 
talked a lot about the Constitution and everybody's 
constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. We have to consider the additional hurdles and 
challenges for those in the disability community and respond in 
kind by ensuring that our laws do not add additional hurdles to 
ensure that everybody has that right to life, liberty, and 
pursuit of happiness.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Just to followup with it, both you and Ms. 
Lopez, on the behavioral health implications. For communities 
that are unique, like the disabled community, people who are 
disproportionately lower income, people of color living in 
stress and trauma, again, one more thing, but a significant 
life-transforming event for multiple people in this decision 
process so they can get the behavioral health they need, while 
they are being tugged by the rest of society in this political 
atmosphere.
    Ms. McMorrow. Absolutely. I am concerned. You know, it 
brings up a broad conversation of how do we expand access to 
healthcare, and mental healthcare, and wraparound supports so 
that everybody has the fundamental right to decide if and when 
to become pregnant, knowing that that impacts the family as 
well, and that families take many different forms.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Ms. Lopez, do you have any observations, 
comments?
    Ms. Lopez. I am just grateful to lift up the disability 
community, especially rural folks, LGBTQ folks, and Black and 
indigenous people of color. These are all the communities that 
are already disproportionately impacted by abortion bans and 
restrictions. And what I have seen in helping people is that 
over the last few years as I have been working in abortion 
funds, is that people are so desperate, they will do anything 
they can to get this care, whether that is, you know, give up 
their rent money or, like, shuffle around to make sure they 
have child care. These are things that are dire, and they all 
play into if and when abortion is accessible.
    Mr. DeSaulnier. Thank you so much. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlewoman from Massachusetts, Ms. Pressley, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Hawley, please 
state for the record, when an ectopic pregnancy ruptures, what 
are the chances that it can be carried to term?
    Ms. Hawley. My understanding is that when an ectopic 
pregnancy ruptures, it is a life-threatening condition. That is 
why the treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion.
    Ms. Pressley. I am sorry, reclaiming my time here. Again, 
could you just answer the question? When an ectopic pregnancy 
ruptures, what are the chances that it can be safely carried to 
term? And you know what, just to make this even clearer, I am 
looking for a number between zero to 100. Can you give me a 
percentage?
    Ms. Hawley. Sure. I believe zero ectopic pregnancies, even 
those that do not rupture, have a chance of successfully being 
carried to term. That is why the treatment for them is not an 
abortion.
    Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time. It seems that there is a 
deficit in your understanding of reproductive health. In fact, 
I want the record to reflect that according to the American 
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, treatment for 
ectopic pregnancy requires ending a non-viable pregnancy. Now, 
let us turn----
    Ms. Hawley. With respect, ma'am, that is not an abortion.
    Ms. Pressley. This is my time. I asked you the question, 
you answered, and I am now providing you with the accurate 
information from medical experts. My question was, when an 
ectopic pregnancy ruptures, what are the chances it can be 
safely carried to term. The answer is zero percent.
    Ms. Hawley. I answered that correct, ma'am.
    Ms. Pressley. Further, when it comes to one's accurate 
understanding of reproductive health and abortion care with an 
ectopic pregnancy, the American College of Obstetricians and 
Gynecologists says, ``Treatment for ectopic pregnancy requires 
ending a non-viable pregnancy.'' This is my time.
    Ms. Hawley. That is not----
    Ms. Pressley. So now I am going to turn to the real 
experts----
    Ms. Hawley. That is not an abortion because it does not 
have the intent to end the life of a child.
    Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time, reclaiming my time, I am 
now going to turn over to the real experts. So, despite the 
active misinformation campaign that is endangering the lives of 
pregnant people, including much of the testimony heard here 
today, endangering the lives of pregnant people, their 
families, and entire communities, this hearing is an 
opportunity for quality public health education that 
prioritizes equity and justice in reproductive healthcare.
    Representative Shannon, I would like to ask you about 
medication abortion. Now, this is a topic that many are hearing 
about for the first time in the news. Since first being 
approved by the FDA more than 20 years ago, medication abortion 
is now the most common form of abortion healthcare. It is 
discreet, incredibly safe, and highly effective. In my home 
state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, nearly half of 
pregnancies are terminated by medication abortion. Last year, 
Chair Maloney and I led calls to improve access to the 
medication abortion drugs, mifepristone, and end arbitrary and 
burdensome restrictions that experts agreed were medically 
unnecessary. And thankfully, the FDA revised its regulations so 
that patients can receive what many of us refer to as ``mife'' 
by mail.
    Representative Shannon, what does having access to 
medication abortion by mail mean for people in your state, 
particularly people of color?
    Ms. Shannon. Yes, thank you. So, as I mentioned before, 
most of our state, the resources are located in Atlanta, and so 
around the state, a lot of folks don't have access to 
providers. So being able to have access to medication abortion 
means that people can get access to care after they have made 
their decision, regardless of what zip code they live in. And 
we all know that forcing someone to carry a pregnancy, an 
unwanted pregnancy, leads to poor health outcomes, so having 
access to medication abortion is the right thing to do.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you. Ms. Lopez, based on your 
experience working to connect pregnant people in Texas with 
abortion care, would increased government support to expand 
abortion access, including medication abortion, benefit the 
clients that you work with?
    Ms. Lopez. Absolutely, especially now that we have seen 
most clinics in Texas shutter, and especially because of H.B. 
2, which was passed in 2013.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you.
    Ms. Lopez. That shuttered the rest, over half the clinics 
in Texas.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you very much. And I think the point 
here is that pregnant people in multiple states have had 
emergency surgery delayed and their lives put at risk, while 
lawyers and doctors debate care due to confusion caused by the 
Republicans and this far-right Supreme Court. This is a matter 
of life and death. Thank you.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, I would request on behalf of our 
side of the aisle that in the future, our membership treat our 
witnesses with a little more respect and not be as hostile and 
confrontational. I believe that we have got a witness here 
today that has been very honest and very polite in trying to 
answer the questions, and I just feel like the last questions 
were a little over the line by Ms. Pressley. I wanted to say 
that for the record, very disappointing.
    Ms. Pressley. Well----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mr. Sarbanes, you are now recognized. 
Mr. Sarbanes?
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you 
to the panelists. You have been here for a long time, but your 
testimony has been of great consequence. So, we thank you for 
taking the time, and those joining remotely as well.
    In the wake of the Dobbs decision, as we know, many states 
already have bans on abortion in place. And we know that 
conservatives around the country are pushing policies to 
further limit women's fundamental rights in many, many states. 
Given this reality, it is all the more essential for 
individuals in other states to redouble their efforts to 
protect and expand abortion access, in a sense, to be an anchor 
in the midst of this storm.
    In my home state of Maryland, which, thankfully, is one 
where access to abortion is still protected, a new law allows 
certain non-physician practitioners with qualified training to 
provide abortions. Other states such as Delaware, Washington, 
Connecticut, have also recently taken steps to strengthen 
access to abortion care. But even when state legislatures pass 
laws protecting abortion care, we must continue to be vigilant. 
In Maryland, we have seen, for example, where the Governor 
recently refused to release funds that were appropriated to 
support portions of the state's new abortion access law.
    Ms. Goss Graves, I wanted to ask you to kind of speak to 
the emerging two Americas that we are seeing now, and in this 
case, to why it is critical that there be actions to expand 
abortion access in places like Maryland and other states where 
the right is protected. And just speak a little bit to what you 
see as that dynamic because we are headed in the near term 
toward that reality and understanding how we manage it I think 
is going to be extremely important.
    Ms. Goss Graves. You know, a little over two weeks ago, we 
woke up to a reality that had about half the country would be 
hurling into a place where you weren't free to decide whether 
you were going to be pregnant. And what that means is that the 
1 in 4 people, the 1 in 4 women in this country who get 
abortion care are going to have to figure out how to do that 
safely and without criminal penalties. Some will be traveling 
to other parts of the country. Some will be seeking medication 
abortion and seeking to self-manage. All of them are going to 
be doing it at a time of legal and health chaos.
    So, for states that have an opportunity to expand access, 
that is exactly what they should be doing: protecting 
providers, patients, and anyone who is trying to help them. And 
in those states where they are finding that they are suddenly 
waking up in a place that is hostile, I just want to say that I 
see you, and there are people who are fighting for you. The 
idea that we can stand as a Nation with half more free than the 
other is not one that we will be able to stand very long. I 
believe we are hurling toward a time that feels very unsafe.
    Mr. Sarbanes. And I think you are right to describe a kind 
of situation of chaos across the country. We are seeing that 
with each passing day, and I think it is contributing to a 
heightened sense of kind of instability generally in the 
country. This is the consequence of a decision like Dobbs. You 
know, Maryland is one of the states that has an opportunity to 
be a safe haven for women who live in other states where these 
restrictions and bans are in place. But we have got to do what 
we can to expand and model what the kind of support and 
capacity can look like.
    I also think there is an opportunity in states like 
Maryland to gather data in a responsible way that can inform 
the more broader conversation across the country because we 
have had some debates here today over myths and disinformation 
around this topic. And being able to gather data in a way that 
has integrity to it and diligence to it, I think, will be 
important, and states like Maryland, I think, can play a role 
in that effort.
    So, thank you all again for your testimony today. The 
reality is that the Democrats on this committee believe that a 
woman should make her own healthcare decisions, and, 
unfortunately, it seems that the Republicans that we serve with 
here have a different view. They want to take that agency away. 
We must, we will continue to do all we can to protect abortion 
access and ensure that all Americans, no matter where they 
live, can exercise their reproductive freedom. Every American, 
and we know that it is the great majority of Americans, must 
raise their voices in this critical moment. With that, I yield 
back my time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    Before we close, I want to offer the ranking member an 
opportunity to offer any closing remarks that he may have, and 
Ranking Member Comer, you are now recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, I want to 
thank our witnesses for being here today. Ms. Hawley, I want to 
publicly apologize for Ms. Pressley. I feel like that was 
unnecessary, her tone. I appreciate your honesty and all the 
witnesses' willingness to voluntarily testify today.
    A couple of things, Madam Chair, that I wanted to point out 
that I disagreed with statements. Ms. Wasserman Schultz 
continue to disparage crisis pregnancy centers. I mean, they 
are providing a valuable service all over America, and she 
mentioned the word ``fake pregnancy centers.'' If there are any 
fake pregnancy centers that are unlicensed, then she should 
report them to the authorities because it is not allowed to 
have in any state a pregnancy center that is not properly 
licensed. Mr. Gomez referred to my opening statement, and I 
would like to remind Mr. Gomez that unlike Nancy Pelosi, I 
never voted to object an Electoral College confirmation vote. I 
was also on the floor on January 6, and I have always condemned 
the violence that occurred on that day, so I don't know where 
he was referencing that with respect to me.
    I am going to conclude by reminding everyone on this 
committee what is the purpose of this committee is. The purpose 
of the House Oversight Committee is to identify waste, fraud, 
abuse, and mismanagement in the Federal Government. We are 
talking about a Supreme Court case here, something that we 
honestly have zero jurisdiction over.
    This hearing, Madam Chair, with all due respect, was a 
political hearing, in my opinion, to try to fire up the 
demoralized far left-wing of the Democrat Party because of 
disparaging poll numbers with the President and the party. I 
hope that in the future, we can focus on hearings that actually 
identify the core mission of this committee, and that is to try 
to provide oversight for this Biden administration and their 
many policies, like their energy policy, their border control 
policy that are failing, and try to identify wasteful spending 
that we can hopefully reverse and try to tame inflation.
    So again, Madam Chair, thank you for allowing me to a 
closing statement, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I thank all the witnesses for an 
incredible testimony. And I first of all want to say that Ms. 
Pressley was perfectly within her right to reclaim her time. 
That is the way the body works. You have your time, the time 
belongs to the member, and the member can reclaim their time, 
and behaved fully within her rights as a member of this 
committee. I want to compliment her also for her foresight of 
beginning an investigation with me on mifepristone well over a 
year and a half ago, trying to remove the restrictions that the 
FDA had placed on it, to have access to it, which resulted in 
the ability now to mail it into areas of the country. That was 
extraordinary work, and I want to publicly thank her for this.
    And it is absolutely within the realm of the Oversight 
Committee to look at the rights of half the population of our 
country. And this devastating decision is taking away a 
fundamental right that we felt was settled law with 50 years of 
precedent, where Supreme Court justices, they testified before 
the Senate saying they would respect precedent. So, this is a 
shocking devastating opinion, and I would say that we heard 
testimony today from many of our panelists of the dire threat 
to the health of people.
    I think we heard that they said that abortions are going to 
occur. The question is, are they going to be legal and safe? 
Are they going to be illegal and increase the deaths of women? 
This is literally life and death to many women. We have heard 
that over and over again, and we all know that. We have had 
hearings on the high incidence of death for particularly 
African American women with the birth of their children, eight 
times more likely in my great city of New York than the 
national average. That is a huge problem, so it is not unusual 
to look at the health challenges that Americans face.
    And I would say that most women and likeminded men in this 
country would be grateful for the testimony, the knowledge, and 
the experience that they had of listening to our panelists. And 
I would say that today, we heard testimony about the chaos and 
confusion, very beautifully explained by Ms. Graves, caused by 
the Supreme Court's extreme decision to eliminate Americans' 
constitutional right to an abortion.
    To all of our witnesses who shared their expertise and 
personal stories of abortion, I want to thank you. And many did 
not share their stories, but I know their stories, and it is 
very brave to come forward and tell them. Today's hearing makes 
clear that the loss of abortion rights is devastating, 
absolutely devastating for women across the country, for 
particularly people of color, people with low incomes, and 
others who already face barriers to their healthcare.
    Anyone trying to downplay the damage from the Supreme 
Court's decision is flat out lying, and here are the facts. We 
heard them today. Abortion is now illegal in 16 states, with 
more on the way. More than 33 million women are at risk of 
losing abortion rights in these states. That is half of the 
women that are of a reproductive age. Providers are scared to 
offer essential reproductive healthcare. We could not even get 
a provider to come in. They were afraid to come in. They felt 
they would be hurt in some way if they publicly talked about 
their work. And this is in America, and people are being denied 
care for miscarriages and other emergencies because of these 
extreme state laws. Many miscarriages that we heard today are 
very health threatening, and sometimes you can't reach your 
doctor, sometimes you can't even get in the hospital, and it is 
going to cause the death of more women in this country.
    And Republicans are not done. They are simply not done with 
taking away our rights. Next, they want to pass a national 
abortion ban. Major leaders of the party have said that. Just 
ask the Republican members of this committee who are co-
sponsoring a bill to make performing an abortion a crime 
punishable by five years in Federal prison.
    I asked at the beginning of this hearing if this is the 
America we want to live in. We heard today a resounding ``no.'' 
The vast majority of Americans support abortion rights and want 
to make their own decisions about their own bodies. This is why 
Democrats are fighting to protect abortion rights. We feel we 
are fighting for democracy itself. If you can't make decisions 
about your own body, and including your reproductive health, it 
is not a democracy. It is not a free society. Here in the 
House, we are taking up legislation to enshrine abortion rights 
in Federal law, and I urge the Senate to act as well.
    President Biden has also taken decisive action. He issued 
an executive order to protect reproductive care, including 
access to medication abortion and to protect the privacy and 
security of patients and providers. The administration is also 
acting to ensure access to contraception. And I have introduced 
a bill with many members of this committee that would prevent 
pharmacies from refusing to dispense contraception based on 
their personal beliefs.
    As we have heard today, the fight for reproductive rights 
is also taking place in cities and states all over our country, 
and I am proud to stand with my Democratic colleagues in that 
fight. And I am especially proud that this committee has led 
the way in expanding access to medication abortion and 
contraception. This is a fight we will never, ever, ever give 
up.
    Before I close, I want to enter into the record letters, 
statements from NARAL, Pro-Choice America, Physicians for 
Reproductive Health, the American Academy of Family Physicians, 
and Professor Carrie Baker of Smith College, regarding the 
urgent need to protect abortion access.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I would like to just say in closing, I 
want to thank all of our panelists for their remarks. I 
apologize that we had a five-minute time limit. Many of you had 
much more you wanted to say. You can put that into the official 
record. And I want to commend my colleagues, all of them, for 
participating in this very, very important conversation.
    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 you are able.
    This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:19 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]