Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, this new post-Roe reality that we are living with is still sinking in for most of us, but if you are a woman who is pregnant now and needs to end that pregnancy, and you are in one of the States that has outlawed abortion, every day is filled with panic and horror, trying to figure out how to get the care you need. This is a crisis.
Now, politicians in some of those States are threatening to criminalize travel to another State for abortion care and to criminalize doctors and anyone else who might help, for example, with transportation. This is outrageous.
Such extreme laws are nothing less than an attack on women--on our autonomy, on our freedom, on our health, and on our privacy. These are backward positions. They are extreme and draconian.
The decision to have an abortion is one for a woman to make in consultation with her doctor--no one else, definitely not politicians.
As a doctor, I have been in the room with women making the extremely difficult and personal decision about whether to end a pregnancy. Politics has no place there. I have been in the room with a woman with an ectopic pregnancy for whom abortion is the standard of care.
Let's be clear, State laws that criminalize abortion and also criminalize travel across State lines for abortion put doctors in an impossible situation and put women at risk.
As a doctor, I took the Hippocratic Oath to ``first, do no harm,'' and I want you to think for a moment about the harm of a delayed or more complicated abortion, or that ectopic pregnancy, or the harm of having a rape victim carry a pregnancy to term, or the rates of maternal mortality in this country.
Make no mistake. These bans are draconian. Banning travel is extreme, controlling, and dangerous. Women will die because a bunch of politicians decided that they should be in charge of women's bodies. This is reprehensible.
I will keep doing everything I can to protect women's access to abortion no matter where they live, and I implore my House and Senate colleagues to pass these bills.
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia).
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), a real champion for women, for health, and for families.
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), where this is top of mind.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friends, Lizzie Fletcher and Marilyn Strickland and Jamie Raskin, for understanding the Constitution.
Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Donahue threw a Molotov cocktail in a clinic, an abortion clinic, in Shreveport, Louisiana. David McMenemy of Rochester crashed his car into the Edgerton Women's Care Center. A package left at a woman's health center in Austin, Texas, contained an explosive device. It goes on and on and on.
A Texas woman has been charged with murder after a so-called, self- induced abortion. It is clear that our friends are trying to criminalize the right to reproductive freedom.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an article from NPR and a document entitled ``Violence Against Abortion Providers.''
Violence Against Abortion Providers, Clinics, and Activists
December 12, 2005: Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana. The device missed the building and no damage was caused. In August 2006, Hughes was sentenced to six years in prison, and Dunahoe to one year. Hughes claimed the bomb was a ``memorial lamp'' for an abortion she had had there.
September 11, 2006: David McMenemy of Rochester Hills, Michigan, crashed his car into the Edgerton Women's Care Center in Davenport, Iowa. He then doused the lobby in gasoline and started a fire. McMenemy committed these acts in the belief that the center was performing abortions; however, Edgerton is not an abortion clinic. Time magazine listed the incident in a ``Top 10 Inept Terrorist Plots'' list.
April 25, 2007: A package left at a women's health clinic in Austin, Texas, contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death. A bomb squad detonated the device after evacuating the building. Paul Ross Evans (who had a criminal record for armed robbery and theft) was found guilty of the crime.
May 9, 2007: An unidentified person deliberately set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
December 6, 2007: Chad Altman and Sergio Baca were arrested for the arson of Curtis Boyd's clinic in Albuquerque. Baca's girlfriend had scheduled an appointment for an abortion at the clinic.
January 22, 2009: Matthew L. Derosia, 32, who was reported to have had a history of mental illness, rammed an SUV into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Saint Paul, Minnesota, causing between $2,500 and $5,000 in damage. Derosia, who told police that Jesus told him to ``stop the murderers,'' was ruled competent to stand trial. He pleaded guilty in March 2009 to one count of criminal damage to property.
August 29, 2009: Two days after a nearby anti-abortion protest, an unknown arsonist threw a molotov cocktail at a Planned Parenthood in Lincoln, Nebraska. The bomb fell short of the building, leaving no property damage or casualties.
January 1, 2012: Bobby Joe Rogers, 41, firebombed the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida, with a Molotov cocktail; the fire gutted the building. Rogers told investigators that he was motivated to commit the crime by his opposition to abortion, and that what more directly prompted the act was seeing a patient enter the clinic during one of the frequent antiabortion protests there. The clinic had previously been bombed at Christmas in 1984 and was the site of the murder of John Britton and James Barrett in 1994.
April 1, 2012: A bomb exploded on the windowsill of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, resulting in a fire that caused minimal damage.
April 11, 2013: Benjamin David Curell, 27, caused extensive damage to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Indiana, vandalizing it with an axe: Curell was convicted in state court of felony burglary, and pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. In the federal case, he was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay restitution.
October 3-4, 2013: 32-year-old Jebediah Stout attempted to set a Planned Parenthood clinic in Joplin, Missouri on fire two days in a row. Stout previously set a fire at a Joplin mosque.
September 4, 2015: A Planned Parenthood clinic in Pullman, Washington was intentionally set on fire. No injuries were reported due to the time of day, but the FBI was involved because of a history of domestic terrorism against the clinic. The crime was never solved. The clinic reopened six months later.
October 22, 2015: A Planned Parenthood clinic in Claremont, New Hampshire was vandalized by a juvenile intruder. Damaged in the attack were computers, furniture, plumbing fixtures, office equipment, medical equipment, phone lines, windows, and walls. The flooding that resulted from the vandalism also damaged an adjacent business)
February 24-25, 2016: Travis Reynolds, 21, vandalized a Baltimore-area women's health care clinic with antiabortion graffiti. After being arrested, Reynolds ``admitted to police that he defaced the clinic's doors, walls and windows because he thought that it would deter women from using the clinic.'' Reynolds pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in October 2016.
March 7, 2016: Rachel Ann Jackson, 71, vandalized a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbus, Ohio, with the message ``Satan den of baby killers . . .'' She pleaded guilty to felony counts of breaking and entering and vandalism and a misdemeanor count of aggravated trespass. Jackson was sentenced to probation, with the judge citing her struggle with serious mental illness as a mitigating factor.
February 10, 2019: Wesley Brian Kaster, 43, threw a Molotov cocktail at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia, Missouri. Kaster admitted to setting the fire because Planned Parenthood provided abortions, although Planned Parenthood stated that the clinic was not providing abortions at the time due to a state law. Kaster was sentenced to five years in prison.
January 3, 2020: A high school student, Samuel Gulick, spray-painted ``Deus Vult'' on a clinic in Newark, Delaware before throwing a Molotov Cocktail at the front window. Gulick was sentenced to 26 months in prison by a federal judge.
October 10, 2020: A man threw multiple Molotovs at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Fort Myers, Florida.
January 23, 2021: An unknown individual fired a shotgun at a Tennessee Planned Parenthood clinic; no one was injured. News outlets noted that the attack took place on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and at a time when Tennessee's governor, Bill Lee, was involved in a heated online debate regarding abortion and health care.
December 31, 2021: On New Year's Eve, a fire destroyed a Planned Parenthood in Knoxville, Tennessee. The building was closed at the time for renovations. The Knoxville Fire Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives ruled the fire arson. The clinic had previously been shot at in January of the same year.
May 25, 2022: A masked woman set a fire at a planned abortion clinic in Casper, Wyoming. The ATF offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to her arrest. ____ [From NPR, April 10, 2022]
A Texas Woman Has Been Charged With Murder After a So-Called `Self- Induced Abortion' (By Carolina Cuellar)
A Texas woman has been charged with murder for a what authorities are calling a self-induced abortion.
Ayesha Rascoe, Host:
In South Texas, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera is being charged with murder because of a, quote, ``self-induced abortion.'' She's been arrested and will be arraigned Wednesday. The Starr County District Attorney's Office has yet to comment on the case. Here's Texas Public Radio's Carolina Cuellar with what we know.
Unidentified Person: (Chanting in Spanish).
Unidentified People: (Chanting in Spanish).
Carolina Cuellar, Byline: On Saturday, across the street from the Starr County Jail, a sparse crowd of pro-abortion rights activists chanted for Herrera's release.
Unidentified Person: (Chanting in Spanish).
Unidentified People: (Chanting in Spanish).
Cuellar: At the protest, Cathy Torres, the organizing manager for Frontera Fund, said based on what she knows about Herrera's case, it isn't likely to be unique.
Cathy Torres: This is only setting a precedent for other cases. She's not the first. She won't be the last.
Cuellar: She said many women in Texas are having to choose self-administered abortions because of the state's restrictive abortion legislation, like Senate Bill 8. While SB8 explicitly exempts pregnant women who get an abortion from criminal repercussions, it makes it nearly impossible to access abortion services in Texas, and many people are left with little to no legal options to terminate their pregnancy.
Steve Vladeck, who is a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said that based on current information, the murder charge doesn't make sense.
Steve Vladeck: The Texas murder statute does apply to the killing of an unborn fetus, but it specifically exempts cases where the person who terminated the fetus is the pregnant woman.
Cuellar: It's unclear whether Herrera induced her own abortion or assisted someone else's self-induced abortion. He said details like which statutes were used to charge her will help paint a clear picture of how prosecutors avoided the exemption if Herrera performed her own abortion. But right now, this information is unavailable. Nonetheless, Vladeck said Herrera's situation shows what will happen as legal protections around abortion crumble.
Vladeck: You know, I think what this case really is is an ominous portent of what things are going to look like on the ground in states that have aggressive abortion restrictions.
Cuellar: Jessica Brand agrees. She's a former prosecutor and founder of The Wren Collective, a criminal justice nonprofit organization.
Jessica Brand: We've had a lot of wake-up calls in Texas for how far people are willing to go to prosecute women, to strip women of their rights.
Cuellar: According to Brand, while legal ground for the case is shaky, it shows how legislation like SB8 emboldens people to push legal boundaries around abortion. She adds that as restrictions continue to grow, they will disproportionately affect marginalized communities, like those along the Texas-Mexico border. This is because they often lack the resources that would allow them to travel out of state and obtain safe medical abortion services.
Brand: It's very, very dangerous. If they decide that a self-induced and termination of pregnancy is, in fact-- qualifies as murder, you can imagine the horrific precedent that sets.
Cuellar: Shortly after the protest, a legal defense fund covered Herrera's $500,000 bail. I'm Carolina Cuellar in Rio Grande City.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I stand, as I said earlier, with a 10-year-old victim who had to run to be able to secure an abortion after being raped.
I stand on the Constitution where the Fifth Amendment says that we are due life and liberty. I stand in front of ``In God We Trust,'' and I tell my friend from Louisiana that the Constitution says that we have a right to freedom of religion.
We speak what we believe. That is what this legislation does, and that is what reproductive freedom is. It is to ensure that the GOP does not criminalize abortion in all 50 States.
It is to ensure that Republicans are not plotting a nationwide ban to criminalize. This Constitutional expose, and explanation, indicates that we have the right to travel and the right to be constitutionally secure in that.
Further, we need to go a step further and criminalize anyone who is a bounty hunter and hold them accountable and put them in jail.
Specifically, this bill provides and makes sure that we prohibit any person or healthcare providers who provide legal abortion or services, that we don't stop that, that we don't stop any person or any entity for helping healthcare providers. Let me thank you and ask support of this legislation.
Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise in strong support of H.R. 8297, the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022.
H.R. 8297, the ``Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022'' will protect women and girls from others preventing or interfering with a person's ability to access abortion care across state lines.
H.R. 8297 prohibits anyone acting under state law from interfering with a person's ability to access abortifacient drugs, abortion counseling, or abortion services out-of-state.
When I cosponsored this bill, I was specifically thinking of the women in my hometown of Houston, who now must travel 12 hours to reach the nearest abortion clinic in New Mexico.
I fear that Texas women and girls will because of the state's antiabortion laws will be living behind a new ``Iron Curtain.''
The harrowing stories of people escaping across the Berlin Wall to freedom will be replaced by women escaping Texas to save their own or a loved one's life.
I am concerned that there will be a new Underground Railroad with conductors ferrying women to New Mexico where they well have the freedom to make their own medical decisions.
It is the landmass of the state of Texas that makes this bill desperately needed.
Texas is the second-largest state in the US with an area of 268,597 square miles or 171,902,080 acres which is more than 7.4 percent of the United States total land mass.
In comparison, Texas is about 1.65 times larger than California, at 163,696 square miles.
Texas is not the largest state, however. Alaska, the largest state in the US is nearly 2.5 times larger than Texas at 663,300 square miles.
Texas has 29 million residents and the 13th highest GDP in the world at 1.78 trillion as of 2019.
If Texas were its own country, it would be the 40th largest out of 193 countries in the world, bigger than every country in Europe.
It is the quantitative, logistical, and legal challenge of driving to gain abortion services.
To the South is the country of Mexico with passport requirements which costs hundreds and often many weeks to obtain.
Those women living in regions of the state that border other states with prohibitions on reproduction options for women will make travel to New Mexico the only option.
To give some perspective on the size of Texas.
Austin is closer to New Orleans than it is to El Paso.
San Diego is closer to El Paso than it is to Houston.
The distance from Washington, D.C. to New York City is about 228 miles, or four hours driving.
The distance from Dallas to Houston, which is roughly 230 miles, or a little over four hours in a car.
To the north and northeast are Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma all of which have and made add to the hurdles of reaching a service provider by car.
It takes around 13 hours to drive the 805 miles from the northernmost point to southernmost Texas. You would start in Texhoma, a small town that sits on the border of Texas and Oklahoma then drive south through Lubbock, San Antonio, and all the way down to Brownsville, the southernmost city on the tip of Texas.
It takes 11 hours to drive 773 miles from easternmost to westernmost points across Texas.
Any drive of just a few hours may place women in the jurisdiction of unincorporated areas, rural towns, and counties where aggressive enforcement of a state law may be a priority.
Republican Texas lawmakers have already passed SB 8, one of the most barbaric and archaic anti-abortion laws in the country, that denies women the right to bodily autonomy after carrying a fetus for more than 6 weeks.
If left to their own devices, those lawmakers hope to prevent Texan women from seeking abortions not only in Texas, but elsewhere as well.
That is why I wholeheartedly support H.R. 8297, the ``Ensure Access to Abortion Act of 2022.''
This bill would prohibit any person acting under state law from preventing, restricting, impeding, or retaliating against:
health care providers who provide legal abortion services to out-of- state residents;
any person or entity who helps health care providers provide such services;
any person who travels to another state to obtain such services;
any person or entity who helps another person travel to another state to obtain such services; or
the movement in interstate commerce of drugs that are approved to terminate pregnancies.
Women in Texas and in other states with anti-abortion laws are already in crisis. They are already forced to flee their communities, incur undue financial costs, and combat social stigma to seek abortion care beyond their state boundaries.
We cannot allow these women to then be additionally prosecuted for exercising their right to abortion care in states where that right is still upheld.
The ``Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022'' would protect women in need of abortions from litigation.
But it goes admirably beyond that by protecting those who support women in exercising their reproductive rights.
Many organizations and community networks have rallied around women since the Supreme Courts Dobbs decision.
Churches, non-profits, and private companies have all stepped up to the plate to support women carrying unwanted pregnancies whether it be through financial contributions, transportation assistance, housing options, or access to abortion drugs.
The ``Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022'' would shield them from those who wish to make personal gains off the private medical decisions of women.
Just last week, a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio was denied an abortion in her home state because she was six weeks and three days pregnant.
I will say it again: A 10-year-old girl. Six weeks and three days pregnant.
The anti-abortion trigger laws in her state forced this little girl to travel 175 miles to Indianapolis in order to have her rapists' fetus removed from her young body.
This little girl had to leave the comfort of her community, leave her state, and drive for hours in order to get the necessary medical care she undeniably needed.
Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would have preferred it if she could not have done even this.
Many conservative lawmakers would have preferred to see lawsuits filed against the family member who made her abortion appointment, the nurse who greeted her at the clinic, the parent who drove her home.
Maybe they would have even preferred to see lawsuits against the owner of the gas station where the family refueled their car, or the search engine that helped them locate the abortion clinic that saved their child from becoming a 10-year-old mother.
Imagine if lawmakers had decided that this little girl had to see a physician 24 hours in advance of her appointment. Imagine if they had mandated that she see an ultrasound of her fetus. Imagine if they had required the physician who cared for her to counsel this child on the benefits of adoption.
That is the reality many Republican lawmakers would like to see.
That is why these two bills are so important.
I stand in proud support of both H.R. 8296, the ``Women's Health Protection Act of 2022,'' and H.R. 8297, the ``Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022.''
I urge my colleagues to stand up for women and girls and the providers who meet their medical needs every day.
We cannot let those who wish to relegate women to second-class citizens turn back the clock any further.
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wilson).
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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, once again, I speak as a woman, a mom, a doctor, and a pediatrician who has rescued many babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.
I tell you that we have heard a lot of statistics on the other side of the aisle, but one statistic that has not been said is that 100 percent of women who choose abortion make that decision on their own and for themselves, and that is the way that it needs to stay.
This is a healthcare decision that only a woman can make in consultation with her doctor. That is why we are here today, to protect women's autonomy over their own healthcare, over their own lives, over their own destinies, and that is a fundamental right.
When we talk about freedom, we want to talk and we need to talk about the freedom of a woman to control her destiny, to make her own decisions; and that is why these bills are so important, to protect a woman's right to choose and to make sure that if her State does not allow it, she can choose, freely, to travel to another State and get the care she needs.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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