WASHINGTON - July 26 - Thursday evening the U.S. Senate joined with their House colleagues in passing their version of legislation that will endanger the health and lives of many young women, or make felons out of their trusted relatives and clergy. The House passed an even harsher measure last year and the bills will have to be reconciled before this cruel bill becomes law.

The Teen Endangerment Act, S. 403 and H.R. 748, will make it a federal crime to accompany a minor (in states where parental notification or consent laws are in force) -- even a granddaughter, niece or sister -- who is obtaining an abortion in a nearby state (even if that is the nearest clinic), thus making criminals of friends and family members helping teens who are unable to involve a parent in their decision.

This new law will subject young women, health care providers, battered women's counselors, and others to a confusing maze of overlapping and conflicting state and federal laws, which will make it more difficult and more dangerous for a teenager to get help if she is not ready for the life-altering job of motherhood to make that choice.

As the mother of two adolescent girls, I believe that my daughters would come to me if they were ever in such a situation. But there are many young women who will not and cannot approach their parents with such a dilemma, and who will do as Becky Bell, the 17-year-old Indiana honor student who died because of an illegal botched abortion. She desperately did not want to disappoint her beloved parents, and ended her pregnancy the only way she could find. Now her brother and parents speak out publicly, to warn of the deadly consequences of such strict laws for teens, and the devastating consequences for their parents.

Passing bill after bill, which the bully-in-chief gleefully signs, Congress has been busy ensuring that today's girls and women have no medically accurate information about sexuality and pregnancy prevention, no guidance or knowledge about how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, including the lethal HIV/AIDS virus, and reduced access to contraception and the means to prevent unwanted pregnancy. They are cutting family planning funds, and forcing the closing of reproductive health clinics in city after city all across the country. Not yet able to outlaw abortion, they are doing their best to limit access.

They show no concern for the health and future of the girls and women in their states or across this nation. The reality of rape and incest is hidden behind walls of denial. Millions of girls and women are assaulted and raped, often by people they know. And when they become pregnant through incest, violence or unwanted sexual activity, they often have nowhere to turn, no money to either terminate or carry through the pregnancy, and no one in their immediate family to talk to. If the impregnator is a family member or acquaintance the double burden of shame and fear is almost unbearable.

We all know of the Afghan Taliban's reliance on religion to justify their repression and control of girls and women. Now this Republican Taliban, with shameful help from certain Democrats, has made it clear that they are more concerned about appeasing U.S. religious and political extremists than they are about the health and well-being of our sisters, nieces, daughters and granddaughters.

These heartless elites, who have never faced the terror of a forced or unwanted pregnancy without options, have decided to force frightened young women into illegal abortions or indenture them to lives of ignorance and reproductive servitude, by depriving them of even the opportunity to turn to relatives or clergy for help.

This legislation opens a Pandora's Box of potential federal anti-abortion legislation. If the Congress can prevent a minor from having an abortion in another state, requiring her to follow her home state's laws -- what is to prevent them from imposing the same rules on adult women -- so that a woman from South Dakota, if that state's abortion ban is retained, would be prohibited from going to New York or Minnesota for an abortion, even in case of rape or incest.

This is far more than a slippery slope; it is descent into an abyss where there is no respect for women's humanity. Those who care about the ability of women to control their fertility, plan their families, and make their most private decisions privately, must speak out loudly before it is too late. And we must remember in November.

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