With much of the committee hearing focused on anecdotal examples of women trying to obtain abortions in pro-life states, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the ranking member of the committee, characterized the meeting as “partisan politics being played out in a committee hearing.”
“It’s an election year in which a Democratic incumbent president [Joe Biden] is running behind,” Cassidy said. “So a decision has been made to raise abortion to a high profile, to change the setting, to invite a lot of folks, to put us on TV.”
Cassidy, who displayed a diagram showing the development of a preborn baby from the 10th week of pregnancy through the 41st week, accused Democrats of attempting to “normalize a decision to abort a child,” which is a procedure “in which the intent is to end a life.”
“I’m a doctor,” Cassidy said during the hearing. “I see that you have to take care of that mama … but you have to recognize that there is another life there as well. This is not just a collection of cells. This is a child that, if delivered, will live, and maybe this one, too, and that one as well. So let’s have a national dialogue.”
Melissa Ohden, a woman who survived a late-term abortion procedure when her mother was 19 years old and pregnant, was one of the pro-life panelists invited to testify at the hearing. Ohden said: “The nightmare here is not abortion bans” but rather “the nightmare is that abortion continues to be aggressively promoted so that it is seen as the only option.”
“Consider how different women’s and children’s lives, families, [and] our society could be if just as much money was spent to provide financial assistance, housing, education, and employment support, child care, medical, and mental health care,” Ohden continued. “This would lead to a new era of women’s empowerment that ends the generational trauma of abortion.”
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