WASHINGTON — Abortion restrictions in Texas and other states are preventing patients from receiving much-needed services, providers and advocates told Capitol Hill lawmakers Thursday.
Victims of rape and incest, mothers struggling to work multiple jobs and care for their kids and college students trying to plan the rest of their lives are being turned away from clinics, testified Dr. Bhavik Kumar, medical director for primary and trans care at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston.
He described patients arriving with IV poles because their pregnancies have resulted in serious health complications.
“Over and over again we are forced to violate our conscience and our training to turn away patients who need us,” Kumar said. “There’s nothing more inhumane, cruel or unethical than having to deny people the essential health care they seek in their time of need.”
The House Oversight Committee hearing aimed to spotlight repercussions of prohibiting abortion as some Republicans seek to enact a nationwide ban after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs. Wade.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., recently introduced legislation banning abortion after 15 weeks and urged Republicans to advance it if they retake Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
His proposal includes exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, which Texas’ ban does not, as well as cases where the life of the pregnant woman is endangered by physical illness or disorders.
Several Republican members of the committee said Thursday’s hearing was simply one more opportunity for Democrats to engage in “fearmongering” on abortion before Congress recesses and lawmakers hit the campaign trail.
They said Democrats are doing everything they can to distract from other pressing issues on voters’ minds, such as inflation, crime and immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Democrats believe they have a political advantage when it comes to abortion and sought Thursday to preview what might happen if Republicans were to ban abortion nationally.
Kumar testified that Texas’ overlapping abortion bans inadequately define exceptions for medical emergency, which has prompted doctors to wait before intervening in some cases because patients weren’t sick enough.
He cited the state’s already high maternal mortality rates, particularly for Black women.
“We don’t have to imagine a world where people face the deadly consequences of being denied essential medical care,” he said. “It’s here and we should be ashamed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Democrats also played a video recorded by Elizabeth Weller of Houston. She and her husband went to the ER after her water unexpectedly broke at 19 weeks and it quickly became clear their daughter wouldn’t survive.
“Fearing a legal backlash from the state of Texas, our hospital refused to allow our doctor to perform the medically necessary abortion and instead discharged me, instructing us to return when my infection worsened,” she said. “In the following days, we constantly checked for signs of aggravated infection while we mourned the loss of our daughter.”
She said the flow of amniotic fluid draining from her body was a constant reminder of her baby’s impending death.
“Although my life and ability to have any future children was put in danger, my life was not in enough immediate danger for the state of Texas to allow for our doctors to perform a medically necessary procedure,” she said.
Republican members of the committee noted that none of the state bans prohibit doctors from performing abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman.
Some also downplayed the potential for a national abortion ban passing, given that Democrats hold the White House. The GOP lawmakers painted Democrats as the extreme party for advocating few, if any, legal restrictions on abortion.
Reps. Michael Cloud and Pete Sessions, both Texas Republicans, said the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe returns the issue to the states.
Along with every other Texas Republican in Congress, both have co-sponsored federal anti-abortion bills in this Congress.
One of the bills they both supported would ban abortion nationally after 20 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.
Another would define life as starting at conception, which critics say would effectively enact a complete ban on abortion from coast to coast.
Cloud said there has been a lot of misinformation and fearmongering about the end of democracy in the wake of the Supreme Court decision and ahead of the midterms.
“What the Dobbs decision did was basically say that Roe got it wrong and that there’s not a constitutional right to an abortion, which is a pretty accurate statement,” Cloud said. “And as far as the end of democracy, it returned the issue to the states where people can actually vote on it and have differing ideas in differing states.”
The advocates and physicians testifying at the invitation of Democrats on the committee repeatedly cast abortion as critical health care — a framing rejected by the Republican witness at the hearing, Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, an OB-GYN.
Wubbenhorst cited a medical definition of abortion as terminating a pregnancy without a live birth and said the procedure does not prevent or treat any disease.
“It has instead as its goal the death of a human being,” Wubbenhorst said. “It is therefore not health care for the mother or her fetus.”
As supporting evidence for her position, Wubbenhorst cited studies indicating most OB-GYNs do not perform abortions.
Another witness, Dr. Nisha Verma, a practicing OB-GYN in Georgia and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, disagreed with that assessment and cited professional organizations in the field.
“The overwhelming consensus of the scientific medical community is that abortion is absolutely health care,” Verma said.
