Louise Slaughter: “everything about this debate is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking the misinformation that has been disseminated. The…”

“everything about this debate is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking the misinformation that has been disseminated. The thing that hurts me most hurt me back in the days before abortion was legal for women. And that is that women have no rights or abilities to choose. They are not bright enough. They are not nurturing enough. They do not have enough sense. It is only up to men in suits and ties to tell them what is good for them and how to think. Imagine a scene in a doctor's office where a doctor, a woman, her husband, awaiting a baby, desperately excited about it. The doctor says, I have bad news for you. Something seriously has gone wrong and we need to discuss our options. Now, they have some options. If this Congress has its ways, they will not. I remember as I grew up, young girls, knew that their future at the point of giving birth, if there was to be a choice between their lives or the baby would die. I remember kids, when I was growing up, who had no mother. She had died in childbirth. The woman who would have been my mother-in-law died in childbirth. My husband had a very difficult time ever finding out anything about her. No one wanted to talk about her. Before I gave birth to my first child, I worried terribly about that. I wondered, if my husband would be married again, would he marry a woman, as my father-in-law had, someone who would never discuss who I was or what I meant. Now, fewer women die in childbirth. There are options.…”