Dianne Feinstein: “In the past 30 years, since the Supreme Court upheld a woman's right to choose, a great deal has changed for women in…”

“In the past 30 years, since the Supreme Court upheld a woman's right to choose, a great deal has changed for women in America. But now, in 2003, we are about to push women back to where they were in the 1950s, a generation that I remember well, a generation of passing the plate to raise money for abortions in Mexico, a generation of back alley abortions, a generation of tremendous mortality and morbidity for women, a generation of fear. It makes no sense. The fact that a majority of the House-Senate conference stripped out sense-of-the-Senate language that merely summarized Federal abortion law should be exhibit A for anyone who doubts that this bill is really a frontal political attack on choice in America. I am also disappointed that the conference refused to accept a commonsense amendment I offered to the bill before us today. That amendment, as I said, would have banned all postviability abortions except if determined by the doctor that such an abortion was necessary to protect the life and health of the woman.”