Stop Continued Attacks on Women’s Access to Abortion Care

WASHINGTON - Statement of Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF):

The so-called “Protect Life Act,” sponsored by Representatives Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Dan Lipiniski (D-IL) is another attempt to restrict women’s access to abortion care. The Pitts Bill is a new version of the old Stupak amendment from the health care reform debate, and would make it all but impossible for women to get coverage for abortion care in the new state health care exchanges, even when paying with their own funds. This bill could also impact the availability of abortion coverage in insurance markets generally, and would let public hospitals refuse to provide emergency abortion care even when necessary to save a woman’s life.

This bill could have devastating consequences for the more than one million women who choose abortion each year—women like Mary Vargas who is standing with House Energy and Commerce Democrats today to oppose this bill and explain how its provisions would have affected her ability to make the decisions that were best for her family. Mary chose to terminate her wanted pregnancy after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal form of Potters’ Syndrome [full story below]. The Pitts Bill would deny coverage for abortion care even in cases like Mary’s.

It is unconscionable that anti-choice legislators are continuing their attempts to further restrict access to abortion care for women like Mary. Abortion care is basic health care for women and should not be treated differently from other health care services.

Representative Pitts’ agenda is so extreme that this bill originally attempted to redefine rape and incest. Although he removed this language from the bill after weeks of public outrage, the rest of its provisions are also extreme and would adversely affect the lives and health of women. NAF calls on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to defeat this extreme attack on women and ensure that women can access the abortion care they need.

Statement of Mary Vargas on Harmful Impact of Pitts Bill

Good morning. My name is Mary Vargas. I am a lawyer and a mother, and like most Americans I would lay down my life for my children. Like many women I never thought I would choose to end a pregnancy, but that was before David. As I make plans to visit the grave of my son on the anniversary of his death next week, I know that the choice a woman makes is not always what she would have anticipated before an abstract tragic reality became her own story.

As a lawyer, I represent people who are seeking dignity and equality. I represent both individuals with disabilities who experience discrimination and women who are denied insurance coverage for abortion care—because both in the end are about dignity and fundamental human rights. Because of my experiences, both personal and professional, I believe in a woman’s right to choose.

When I was 22 weeks pregnant with my very much wanted second son whom we had already named David, he was diagnosed with a fatal form of Potters’ Syndrome. His kidneys had stopped working and atrophied. As a result, his lungs could not develop. We prayed that we could hold him, regardless of disability, but our options were unspeakable.

We could terminate the pregnancy, if we could find doctors and nurses willing to provide care, and if we could pay for it out of pocket, since my husband’s insurance was restricted from covering abortion care. Or we could wait. We could allow our son to suffer without comfort, to feel his bones being crushed and broken in the absence of amniotic fluid, until he died in utero, or at delivery, suffocating to death in the absence of developed lungs. Two specialists confirmed that he had no chance at life.

We struggled with the moral questions, the ethical questions, the religious questions, the practical questions, and how to explain to our living child that his brother would not be coming home. We questioned the meaning and value of mercy.

We “chose” to end the pregnancy – not for us, but because choosing mercy was the only thing we could do for our unborn son. I would have liked to have held him. Yet, I know our decision was the right one for our child. I know because of this experience that many times the choice to terminate a pregnancy is made because a woman value’s life: because she or her unborn child, or both is dying, or because they are suffering towards no purpose.

It wasn’t a choice I would wish on my worst enemy, but I’m grateful the choice was mine.

As a lawyer, I carry in my heart the words of a client who described what it felt like to lose her child. Late in her pregnancy, despite the best prenatal care, she faced a devastating medical diagnosis that her baby was missing a main part of its brain and would likely not survive or only survive in a vegetative state. She considered her unborn child’s suffering, and made the difficult decision to end her pregnancy. She described feeling as if she would literally go insane with grief at the loss. In this devastating time, she discovered that her ability to make the choice to terminate her pregnancy—a choice which she and her husband and her faith leader believed moral and right—was restricted by her state government and her insurance carrier.

Not only did she have to go through the hell of ending her very much wanted and loved pregnancy, but she had to do it across the country far from her home and loved ones because care was not available in her state. And she had to obtain legal counsel, and spend more than a year appealing to her insurance company before they would finally agree to cover the more than $17,000 she had to pay out of pocket for the abortion care she needed.

In the end, what I know to be true both as a professional and as a mother, is that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a decision that can never be understood at a distance. It is because of these real life experiences with abortion, that I am appalled by the legislative efforts that deny the complexity of abortion, and the freedoms at stake. Neither the Smith Bill nor the Pitts Bill is a simple codification of existing restrictions on abortion (of which there are, already, many).

This legislation is a deliberately crafted framework designed to remove abortion as an option for women, regardless of their circumstances. These bills would put women’s lives and health at risk, and prevent women like me from exercising their own faith and morality. This cannot be who we are as Americans.

Thank you.