Zoe Lofgren: “I object to this whole process, first of all on the basis of the public process by which we arrive at it. This is a…”

“I object to this whole process, first of all on the basis of the public process by which we arrive at it. This is a parliament. This is no longer a Congress. It is a parliament where one party rams things through without having hearings on the implications of what they are passing. If they have got the votes, they get it. The only thing missing from this being a parliament is that we do not have a vote of confidence or they would be gone. Because they cannot bring a budget out here and pass it and get out of here, so they bring out these wedge issues. Now, I am a physician, and it is very clear to me from reading this that they did not think about what the implications of this are. What about a spontaneous abortion? All the time, women get pregnant; and then for reasons we do not understand, their body rejects this child. Oh, now, if somebody has pushed them on that day when that happens, this puts them in jail for the rest of their life. How is one going to prove that it was caused by the action? The second issue is the whole question of intent. For my colleagues to just brush over this business of intent, acts of violence against women are not very well thought through in about 99.9 percent of the cases. They occur when people are angry. They occur when people are drunk. They occur in all kinds of circumstances.”