Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for yielding.

Madam Speaker, as the doctor has just said, this is an extraordinarily complex and difficult issue for all.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill and the Women's Health Protection Act that we are also considering today.

Three weeks ago today, the United States Supreme Court's unprecedented decision reversed nearly 50 years of established precedent overturning Roe v. Wade and paving the way for trigger laws across the country to criminalize access to abortion instantly. With this ruling, women in 2022 will now have fewer rights than their mothers or grandmothers and less control over their own bodies and their own healthcare.

Today, the House of Representatives is responding to protect the women of our country. Today, this House will vote to stand with women and affirm their freedom to make their own healthcare decisions.

It is not an easy decision, and it is not made lightly, but it ought to be free from interference from politicians. We must do everything, in my view, in our power to ensure that women are free to travel wherever they need in order to access reproductive care safely, legally, and without fear of punishment.

That is why I brought to the floor this bill, the Ensuring Women's Right to Reproductive Freedom Act. This legislation would prohibit States from preventing, impeding, or obstructing women from traveling to other States for reproductive care or retaliating against them for doing so.

Over a century and one-half ago it was legal to own people because of the color of their skin. They could escape, as Harriet Tubman did and as Frederick Douglass did, from their slavery on the Eastern Shore of our State and go to a so-called free State. But then, tragically, the Congress enacted a bill which allowed people to go and reimpose slavery on those folks. Let's none of us do the same.

This legislation would prohibit States from preventing, impeding, or obstructing women from traveling to other States for reproductive care where it is legal or retaliating against them for doing so. These draconian and authoritarian laws that States are talking about are going to criminalize behavior no matter whether it is legal in the State to which you went.

One of the first bills I voted on in 1967 when I first went to the State senate--at that point in time I was about 8 months out of law school--was to repeal the miscegenation statutes which said that a Black person could not marry a White person or a person of Japanese extraction or Chinese extraction. The Supreme Court held that unconstitutional.

It would be like saying: You can go to a State where that certainly is legal for an African American and a Caucasian to marry, but if you come back here, you are going to be a criminal.

That is draconian, authoritarian, and almost Communist-like. It is dictatorship that China tried to pursue and did.

This bill would also extend the same protections to healthcare providers who perform abortions for out-of-state patients and to anyone who helps them with transportation. Let us not set up a society where people are watching their neighbor, reporting on their neighbor, and criminalizing behavior which has, for one-half century, been the decision of a woman. Yes, she could consult her doctor and she could consult others, but it was her body that was at stake. It is her decision.

Additionally, this bill would protect the movement in interstate commerce of prescription drugs approved by the FDA to end pregnancies safely at home.

I am grateful to Representatives Lizzie Fletcher, Marilyn Strickland, and Jamie Raskin for introducing this legislation and to Chairman Pallone for advancing it through the Energy and Commerce Committee so speedily. I also want to thank Diana DeGette and Barbara Lee for their leadership on this issue as co-chairs of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus.

While protecting interstate travel is an important step, Congress must do much more to ensure that every woman in our country can access healthcare and reproductive choice safely, legally, and affordably. That is why we are also considering an updated version of the Women's Health Protection Act today.

I thank Judy Chu, again, for her leadership on this effort.

Make no mistake, Madam Speaker, until we codify Roe v. Wade's 49-year precedent in Federal statute, women in many parts of our country will not be safe or have access to the healthcare they need. I am old enough to remember when it wasn't legal and when people died in back alleys going to charlatans and did not have proper medical care. Let's not return to those dark and tragic days.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, to support freedom, and to support the women of our country. That is the right thing to do.

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