Last night on the floor of the House of Representatives, several pro-life women members of Congress celebrated Women’s History Month with a discussion of abortion in the context of true feminism and women’s rights.
Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, quoted early feminist Alice Paul, who said abortion is the “ultimate exploitation of women.”
Rep. Renee Ellmers of Washington talked about the myriad of ways in which abortions present medical and mental health problems for women.
“The original feminists were, indeed, against abortion. These women believed that there was power in motherhood and in choosing life,” Ellmers said. “It is this exploitation by groups like Planned Parenthood that frighten me for the women of our country.”
“It has been proven that a woman who has had an abortion is six to seven times more likely to commit suicide in the following year than a woman who chooses to deliver her child. We all know of the syndrome postpartum depression. Women who abort are 65 percent more likely than women who deliver to be at risk for long-term clinical depression,” she explained. “Sixty-five percent of U.S. women who had abortions experienced multiple symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, which they attributed to their abortions. In another study, 60 percent said they felt “part of me died.” Compared to women who deliver, women who abort are more than twice as likely to be subsequently hospitalized for psychiatric illnesses within 6 months and to subsequently require significantly more treatments for the psychiatric illnesses through outpatient care.”
Ellmers added: “There are also numerous health risks that can occur after an abortion is performed. Reproductive complications and problems with subsequent deliveries can occur, one of these being pelvic inflammatory disease, which is a major direct cause of infertility. After an abortion, there is a 7- to 15-fold increase in placenta previa in subsequent pregnancies, which is a life-threatening condition for the mother and baby that increases the risk of birth defects, a still birth and excessive bleeding, leading to the possible loss of life of the woman.”
Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio said she was “proud to stand here today, like my sisters before me–like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, like Susan B. Anthony and, yes, like Alice Paul–and say, enough’s enough.”
“Women’s rights are women’s rights, and if a woman has rights, those rights are the child’s rights because everybody has the right to life,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt quoted Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saying: “In a letter to Julia Ward Howe in 1873, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the woman who shocked society, Mr. Speaker, by daring to leave her house proudly showing her pregnancy–because that was just not done–wrote: `When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women to treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.’”
She also quoted early feminist leader Susan B. Anthony, who said: “Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life; it will burden her soul in death.”
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, was delighted to see that, during the exchange, lawmakers referenced a recent study her organization conducted showing a large number of colleges and universities fund abortions in their student health care plans and require students to pay for the plans.
“Our work was just referenced on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. In tonight’s special order, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) spoke about the new Students for Life University Abortion-Healthcare Study, which found that taxpayer money could be funding student abortions on college campuses,” she told LifeNews.com.
Read the entire text of the exchange between the women members at https://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r112:./temp/~r112ceUIqG
