John Hope Bryant: “I rise this afternoon as a cosponsor of this bill and in strong support of this legislation and urge my colleagues to…”

“I rise this afternoon as a cosponsor of this bill and in strong support of this legislation and urge my colleagues to vote in support of it. While there are fundamental differences between us regarding the prolife and prochoice debate, for many of us there is common ground regarding the protection of parental rights and the health of our teenage children. And certainly we are talking about teenage children here. We are not talking about women. We talking about young girls that are underage here, teenagers; 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old teenagers up to perhaps, I guess, age 18 before in most States they become a minor. The truth of the matter is that many of these young pregnant teenagers, these young girls, 12- 13-year-old girls are being impregnated by adult boyfriends, more than 18-year-old men; and they are being carried across State lines by these young men who are 18 or over or by their parents. We heard cases where the mother of this boyfriend carried this young teenage girl across a State line, unbeknownst to her own parents, so she could get an abortion. And this is a complicated medical invasive procedure we are talking about. We are not talking about crossing State lines to go gambling or to go shopping. We are talking about major surgery here that has, as with any surgery, a very high risk not only during the surgery, but after the surgery.”