The United States House of Representatives has just passed a bill, HR 1797, which would ban women from obtaining abortion care starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is the latest in wave of ever-more extreme legislation attempting to restrict a woman’s right to make her own decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy.
On Monday, I had the honor and privilege of standing with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Planned Parenthood of South Florida, Mi Lola, NCJW, and a health care provider at the Planned Parenthood Pembroke Pines Health Care Center in speaking out against HR 1797. Here was my statement:
"My name is Nikki Fisher, and I am here on behalf of the ACLU of Florida because efforts to restrict women’s ability to make personal medical decisions are an attack on the civil liberties and fundamental rights of Florida women.
As part of our mission in protecting the principles of freedom and equality set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the ACLU has a long history of defending reproductive freedom in nearly every critical legal case to reach the Supreme Court.
The recent wave of extreme legislation attempting to restrict a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about whether or not to continue a pregnancy is an assault on our fundamental freedoms.
Florida has been no exception, with our legislature putting an amendment on the ballot last year that would have taken away the state’s constitutional right to privacy from women seeking abortions. Before that, the Florida House punished one of its own member s for using the word “uterus” in a speech on the floor against these anti-woman bills. Our message to those legislators: “if you can’t say it, you can’t regulate it.”
And even worse are the bans which, in conflict with the law and in disregard of medical science, take away women’s decision making ability before a pregnancy is viable. These bans have shown up in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, and Arkansas. And now in Congress, HR 1797 would make such a ban the law of the land.
For over four decades, The Supreme Court has recognized the right of every woman to determine the course of her pregnancy before viability. HR 1797 would take this important right away. It would force women to carry a pregnancy to term, no matter what her circumstances and even where the pregnancy would jeopardize the health of the women. It would also impose criminal penalties on physicians who provide their patients with this needed care at a difficult time.
We must reject this attempt to turn politicians into doctors, and expert, compassionate doctors into criminals. These grandstanding efforts may play well among those who reject the Constitution’s protection on women’s right to make decisions about our health, but they hurt real women.
No matter our differences, surely we can all agree that it is important to protect women’s health, her well-being, and her ability to make the best decisions for herself and her family. HR 1797 should be rejected, not just because it is unconstitutional, but because it compromises women’s health for politics’ sake.