By Nicholas Ballasy http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75901
Congresswoman Calls for Repealing Hyde Amendment; Backs Assertion That Abortion is Safer than Childbirth
(CNSNews.com) — Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion except in certain cases, should be repealed, and also said "there's no evidence" that increasing access to abortion services encourages people to get abortions.
At an event on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Center for Reproductive Rights to call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Schakowsky, "So, increasing access to abortion, you think, does not encourage some people to get abortions?"
"What happens is that women who don't have access resort, as we heard today, to very dangerous, self-inflicted kinds of things in order to end, terminate the pregnancy," she said. "And so, you know, we go back to back alley abortions. We go back to coat hangers. And, I mean, is that what we want?"
She continued, "Women who are desperate enough to do that to themselves are going to somehow – going to try to abort that pregnancy. We don't want to do that. We don't want to put women at greater risk."
Click here to view the embedded video.
Terry Sallas Merritt, vice president of Whole Woman's Health, said during the event on Capitol Hill that abortion is 10 times safer than childbirth.
CNSNews.com asked Rep. Schakowsky if she agreed with Merritt.
"I'm assuming that was on a scientific finding that the insistence of mortality or illness or whatever is an adverse health affect is much more common in childbirth," the congresswoman said. "There are many more things that can go wrong than a first-trimester abortion, but, as was pointed out, in order for poor women to afford an abortion, it may take them a long time to get the money together. They're put in a more precarious health situation, the risks increase as well as the cost."
"We want to make sure this very safe, outpatient procedure is available and accessible to poor women," said Rep. Schakowsky. "That is not to say that we don't want to also increase the availability of family planning, of birth control, which again, there's sometimes discrimination even in that."
"The very same people who vociferously oppose abortion often are not in favor of sex education, they're not in favor of easy access to contraception," she said. "None of it makes sense, and it's all discriminatory against women and their children."
CNSNews.com also asked Rep. Schakowsky if it is morally right to use the taxpayer funds of pro-life Americans to pay for abortion services.
"If we start down that path, then we say that people who don't want to fund wars don't have to pay taxes," she told CNSNews.com.
"You know, there are a number of things that are policies of the government in which many of us may disagree all over the map and, so, I would say that, you know, if as the Supreme Court did, decided that this is a right that women have, then we need to fulfill that obligation and make it accessible to all people," said the congresswoman. "Choice is about choice."
The Hyde Amendment, created in 1976, is attached each year to the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and prevents any program under HHS, such as Medicaid, from paying for abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is at risk.
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