CRR Testimony on H.R. 3 Before Committee on Ways and Means

Center for Reproductive Rights
Testimony
Before the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures,
Committee on Ways and Means
United States House of Representatives,
March 16, 2011.

The Center for Reproductive Rights uses the law to
advance reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right that all governments
are legally obligated to protect, respect, and fulfill.  Reproductive freedom lies at the heart of the
promise of human dignity, self-determination, and equality embodied in both the
U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We
envision a world where every woman is free to decide whether and when to have
children, where every woman has access to the best reproductive healthcare
available, where every woman can exercise her choices without coercion or
discrimination. More simply put, we envision a world in which every woman
participates with full dignity as an equal member of society.

H.R.
3 interferes with private healthcare choices. 
It does so by imposing draconian tax penalties on small businesses and
middle-class families, by making the existing harmful and discriminatory bans
on abortion coverage more intractable, by encroaching on the private lives of
government workers, and by heightening dangerous refusal provisions that are at
odds with prevailing standards of care, and out of step with international and
human rights law.  Congress should
emphatically reject this extreme proposal.