House Judiciary Subcommittee Holds Hearing To Restrict Women’s Access to Safe, Legal Abortion

(PRESS RELEASE) The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing this afternoon which focused on another measure further restricting women’s access to safe and legal health care services. 

The committee considered the disingenuously named Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2016 today, a measure that would further restrict women’s access to health care services by criminalizing a doctor who knowingly performs an abortion sought on the basis of sex or race.  Additionally, the measure would require nurses or doctors to report “suspected cases” that may violate the ban.

Said Angela Hooton, Vice President, US Policy and Advocacy Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“Once again, politicians are using thinly veiled and disingenuous measures to rob women of their right to safe and legal abortion.  Discrimination has no place in the exam room, yet this measure would force health care providers to target women of color for their personal health care decisions.    All women need access to safe, legal care when they have decided they need to end a pregnancy—not bans that criminalize their doctors and stigmatize their health care.”

Today’s hearing comes a little over one month after the U.S. Supreme Court considered Texas’ clinic shutdown law—a measure that threatens to leave fewer than ten abortion clinics in the entire state—and on the heels of years of unrelenting attacks on women’s access to safe and legal abortion, including a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion bans.  All three measures—both Congressional bills and the Texas law—disingenuously purport to be about improving women’s health and safety or addressing discrimination, but are actually intended to limit women’s access to safe and legal abortion.