Power to Decide Urges Congress to Support Legislation Protecting Abortion Rights

Press release

Power to Decide Urges Congress to Support Legislation Protecting Abortion Rights

July 15, 2022

(Washington, D.C.) — The U.S. House of Representatives is slated to vote later today on two urgently-needed bills—the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) and the "Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act”—both of which would protect the fundamental right to seek abortion care without interference or delay.

The Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act, sponsored by Representatives Lizzie Fletcher, Jamie Raskin and Marilyn Strickland, makes clear that people seeking abortion care retain their right to cross state lines to access the care they need. It additionally protects the people who help them, including the health care providers acting within the laws of their own state.

“It is truly a low point in our nation’s history that requires us to reassert the simple right to travel from state to state to receive essential health care,” said Power to Decide CEO Raegan McDonald-Mosley, MD, MPH. “Yet here we are, as anti-abortion lawmakers have suggested criminal penalties for people who cross state lines seeking abortion care, people who support or assist them in seeking abortion care and those who provide abortion care.”

Members of Congress will also revisit the Women’s Health Protection Act, which was first passed by the House of Representatives in September 2021, in the weeks following Texas’s draconian abortion ban SB8 going into effect. This measure would protect abortion access by prohibiting arbitrary bans and medically unnecessary restrictions, such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds or biased counseling. 

“In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections that generations of people had come to rely on, passing WHPA could hardly be more essential.” said Dr. McDonald-Mosley. “We applaud our many champions in the House for taking up these critically important measures. It is time that all of our elected leaders work to protect and expand our freedom to make the personal decisions that shape our lives, our futures and our families, without political interference.”

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Power to Decide is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to ensure all people—no matter who they are, where they live or what their economic status might be—have the power to decide if, when and under what circumstances to get pregnant or have a child.