Joe Pitts: “the other side says this is about choice and, yet, when health care professionals, hospitals across the United States…”

“the other side says this is about choice and, yet, when health care professionals, hospitals across the United States make a choice not to perform abortions, like 86 percent of them do today, abortion proponents have teamed up to force them to perform abortions anyway, regardless of religious objections, regardless of moral objections, regardless of conscientious objections. We have a conscience clause law passed in 1996 that talks about health care entities, but because of court opinions like the one by the Supreme Court in Alaska, we have to clarify that these entities do include hospitals. Now, look at what the other side has said. They want to increase access to abortion services by requiring hospitals; it does not say suggest, it does not say urge, it does not say pressure, it says require every hospital in the State of Maryland to perform abortions. That means every Catholic hospital, every Lutheran hospital, every government hospital. That is what they want. In New Jersey, the pro-abortion lobby sued Our Lady of Lourdes Health Care Services, that is a Catholic agency, and tried to force them to provide abortion. We have heard about Alaska where the pro-abortion lobby went after the Valley Hospital, from whom we heard testimony on the committee, who did not want to provide abortions in the small town of Palmer, and they actually succeeded in the court case that went up to the Supreme Court that ruled that they had to perform abortions.”