Barbara Boxer: “today I am introducing the Freedom of Choice Act. When the Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade decision in…”

“today I am introducing the Freedom of Choice Act. When the Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, it made clear that our Constitutional right to privacy grants women the freedom to choose whether to begin, prevent, or continue a pregnancy. The purpose of this bill is very simple: It ensures that the guarantees of Roe v. Wade will be there for every generation of women. We know what Roe has meant for women these past 33 years. It has allowed them to make their most personal and difficult reproductive decisions in consultation with loved ones and health care providers. It has given them the dignity to plan their own families and the ability to participate fully in the economic and social life of our country. And, most important, it has preserved health and saved lives. Many of us are old enough to remember what it was like in the days before Roe. More than a million women a year were forced to seek illegal abortions, pushed into the back alleys where they risked infection, hemorrhage, disfiguration, and death. Some estimate that thousands of women died every year because of illegal abortions before Roe. When the Senate debated the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Alito, women wrote to me with their own heart-breaking stories. For one woman, the year was 1956. She was only four when her mother died of an illegal abortion performed with a coat hanger. Too scared to ask for help, her mother bled to death at work.…”