The Women’s Health Protection Act was discussed and voted on this morning in the U.S. House of Representatives, where it ultimately passed in a 218-211 vote. Democrats, who make up the majority of the House, pushed this destructive bill through to the U.S. Senate for the first time since the bill was originally introduced in 2013. In outrage against Texas bill SB8, supporters of WHPA criminalized pro-life laws, lawmakers, and citizens and portrayed the abortion industry as the hero, but Planned Parenthood has put millions behind the success of this deceptive bill. If the WHPA becomes law, women and girls will not be protected, but rather, coerced for profit and babies will be subject to free-for-all discriminatory abortion. An unjust, un-American proposal lies under the philanthropic guise of women’s health.
As the WHPA moves to the Senate, Americans United for Life urges our leaders to recall the stories of women who have been exploited by the abortion industry. In June, AUL President & CEO Catherine Glenn Foster testified:
“The Women’s Health Protection Act would effectively ban all lifesaving, state protections for women considering abortion, and for our youngest pre-born children, including those upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, for women considering abortion, for children before viability, and even for many late-term viable children. These include protections for women and children from dangerous and painful late-term abortion, laws that prevent children from being eugenically aborted because they may have Down syndrome, and laws guaranteeing that children born alive during an abortion are provided basic medical care. Informed consent standards, gone. Health and safety standards, gone. As a legal and constitutional expert, I can say that this misguided bill would invalidate hundreds of constitutionally sound state laws that have been debated, passed, and enacted in states from coast to coast in an effort to protect America’s youngest citizens. We’re all connected through what MLK described as our “inescapable network of mutuality,” by our duties and rights to support and care.”
Women deserve better. Representative Greg Pence (R-IN) summed up the hidden risks of the Women’s Health Protection Act in the Friday discussion: “This goes far beyond the guise of healthcare. This, in fact, is infanticide.”
