February 28, 2022
Scholars at the Ethics and Public Policy Center today commented on H.R. 3755, the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which is scheduled to receive a vote in the Senate later today. The bill would establish a virtually absolute federal statutory right to abortion, invalidate numerous state laws pertaining to abortion, and eviscerate key conscience and religious liberty protections.
EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., co-author of the forthcoming Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, said:
“This is abortion extremism at its worst. The ‘Women’s Health Protection Act’ is profoundly unjust; indeed it more accurately could be called the ‘Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act.’ In stripping legal protections from unborn Americans, it denies them the most basic of all rights–the right to life. It even goes so far as to preempt state laws that protect unborn babies and that ensure women are provided with the information and protections for their health and safety that they deserve. This is a profoundly anti-life, anti-woman bill.”
EPPC Visiting Fellow Alexandra DeSanctis, co-author of the forthcoming Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, said:
“The Women’s Health Protection Act has nothing to do with protecting women’s health and everything to do with ‘codifying’ the Supreme Court’s anti-constitutional jurisprudence that enshrines abortion on demand for the entire country. This bill not only recognizes a supposed fundamental right to abortion but also seeks to prevent every state from enacting even the slightest protections for unborn children and pregnant mothers. By pushing this bill even when it has no hope of passing, Democrats are solidifying their abortion extremism and revealing to the American people how deeply out of step they are not only with public opinion but with the demands of justice and human equality.”
EPPC Cardinal Francis George Fellow Mary Hallan FioRito, J.D., said:
“The so-called ‘Women’s Health Protection Act’ has very little to do with protecting women, much less women’s health. Among the law’s most outrageous false assertions are its claims that the ability of American women to participate in the social and economic life of our nation is dependent upon their ability to end the lives of their unborn children and that any limitation on abortion is a form of ‘gender oppression.’ At a time in the United States when there is a great deal of consensus on the abortion issue, Democratic lawmakers once again seek to ignore that consensus and ram through the most extreme abortion law in history. This Act defies the will of the American people and plain common sense.”
EPPC Fellow Rachel N. Morrison, J.D., who serves in EPPC’s HHS Accountability Project, said:
“The so-called Women’s Health Protection Act is neither about health nor protection. It is a desperate and extreme attempt to create abortion on demand until birth by those who justifiably believe the Supreme Court will overrule Roe v. Wade.
“If enacted, health care professionals who have taken an oath to ‘do no harm’ would be forced to participate in intentionally ending the lives of children in the womb. The bill’s proposed removal of religious protections under the bi-partisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act is gratuitous, but not surprising. It is a continuation of the Biden administration’s disdain for conscience and religious freedom rights epitomized by the systematic refusal to enforce federal conscience protection laws by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under abortion radical Xavier Becerra.”
To request an interview with any of the above scholars, or another EPPC scholar, contact EPPC Communications Director Josh Britton at [email protected].
