Sunday, May 8, 2022

‘I Made the Best Decision For Me’: Congress Gets Personal About Abortion

It's been nearly 50 years since the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to have an abortion in the United States. Today, millions of Americans are facing a potential future without that protection. It was reported on Monday that the Supreme Court has already privately voted to strike down Roe, per a leak of the initial draft majority opinion obtained by Politico. If the decision gets published as-is, most likely this summer, around half the states in the country are poised to ban abortion. Over the last few years, states have been passing "trigger laws," which make abortion illegal as soon as the Court allows it. Some states have also been voting in favor of a record number of other restrictions, including imposing patient waiting periods, burdening clinics with costly and medically unnecessary requirements aimed at shutting them down, and the policy du jour among Republicans: banning abortions at various points pre-viability—as early as six weeks, before most people even know they are pregnant.

Abortion remains legal, for now. But as we prepare for a nation without Roe, ELLE brought together five members of Congress who have been open about their personal experiences with abortion: Representatives Cori Bush, Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, and Jackie Speier, and Senator Gary Peters. The members gathered at the U.S. Capitol in February to discuss how to protect abortion access. Of the 536 members of the current Congress, these five are the only ones to have gone on the record with their abortion stories; there are likely many more, given that recent estimates have found that nearly one in four women in the U.S. will have an abortion in their lifetime.

These members chose to participate in ELLE's historic roundtable discussion because they know the power that comes from making the political personal. In sharing their own stories, they are giving a voice to the hundreds of thousands of people who, each year, for hundreds of thousands of reasons, choose to have an abortion.

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