**Click HERE to Watch the Full Hearing***
Phoenix, AZ. – Today, U.S. Senator Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, convened her second field hearing, titled “Chaos and Confusion: Examining the Patchwork of Abortion Restrictions Across America Since Dobbs.” Following the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, this hearing examined how varied abortion laws have taken a toll on patients and providers across the country.
“The Dobbs decision unleashed a terrifying new reality for women and for families. In the first year following the Dobbs decision, over 25 million women found themselves living in states where their future was no longer their own. State legislatures have pursued political agendas to strip women of their freedoms and undermine the patient-physician relationship,” said Senator Butler. “The decision to start a family and build a family is one that should remain between a woman and her doctor—not politicians nor judges. And yet, state courts and state legislatures have stolen away this right from nearly one-third of reproductive age women in this country.”
During her questioning, Senator Butler emphasized the importance of the field hearing and drew attention to how abortion laws in neighboring states like Arizona directly impact California. Senator Butler also stressed that these restrictions do not impact everyone equally, disproportionately impacting minorities and communities of color who bear the brunt of these punitive laws.
Senator Butler chaired the field hearing in the Phoenix A.E. England Building at Arizona State University (ASU). The three witnesses in attendance were Mini Timmaraju , policy expert and President and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Eloisa Lopez, patient witness and Executive Director of Pro-Choice Arizona and the Arizona Abortion Fund, and Dr. Misha Pangasa, provider witness and a Phoenix-based OBGYN, abortion provider, and physician advocate with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“This patchwork of legal abortion in our country means that your freedom to build the life that you want is determined by where you live, how much money you have, and your ability to travel,” said Timmaraju. “Nowhere in the nation is a better demonstration of this patchwork and what we can do to fight back than here in Arizona.”
“In Arizona, after Dobbs, we immediately experienced the revival of an 1864 abortion ban,” said Lopez. “The efforts to revive this antiquated ban confirmed to us all that the opposition will stop at nothing in their attempts to strip us of our freedoms, and control our bodies, our gender identities, and our reproductive outcomes.”
“[Patients] wonder whether I’ll even be allowed to counsel them through all their options, or if I’ll be threatened with a lawsuit or prison time for even bringing up the possibility of abortion, like providers in other states have been,” said Dr. Pangasa. “I see and hear their fear about the future every day. And for those that I’ve already had to send away—the people who haven’t been able to meet the arbitrary criteria for abortion care in Arizona, who I know don’t have the means necessary to pay for the travel, childcare, or time off work, their faces still haunt me.”
Senator Butler has cosponsored critical reproductive rights legislation, including the Right to IVF Act (S.4445), the Right to Contraception Act (S.1999), Reproductive Freedom for Women Act (S.4554), Women’s Health Protection Act (S.701), the Abortion Care Capacity Enhancement and Support Services Act (S.3983), the Access to Family Building Act (S.3612), the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act (S.1031), and the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act (S.1297). These bills would reinstate the federal right to access abortion care and contraception, safeguard a health care provider’s ability to provide abortion services and contraceptives, support the capacity expansion of abortion clinics, prohibit interference with the provision of reproductive health care, and to bolster access to comprehensive reproductive health care. Senator Butler also joined her Democratic colleagues in filing an amicus brief, urging the Supreme Court to reverse a dangerous ruling that would restrict nationwide access to mifepristone—a safe and effective medication abortion drug.
Senator Butler’s opening remarks are below:
Today, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution is holding its second field hearing of the year. This field hearing will examine the patchwork of abortion restrictions across the United States. A patchwork that has caused chaos and confusion across the country for the patients who seek care and for the doctors who provide it. As the availability, accessibility, and legality of abortion varies widely from state to state and can suddenly change in the blink of an eye as we recently saw here in Arizona, women are left bearing the brunt of the fallout. A fallout that began with the brazen actions of a disillusioned Supreme Court majority two years ago.
Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning nearly 50 years of precedent protecting patients’ constitutional right to an abortion.
The Dobbs decision unleashed a terrifying new reality for women and for families. In the first year following the Dobbs decision, over 25 million women found themselves living in states where their future was no longer their own. State legislatures have pursued political agendas to strip women of their freedoms and undermine the patient-physician relationship. The decision to start a family and build a family is one that should remain between a woman and her doctor—not politicians nor judges. And yet, state courts and state legislatures have stolen away this right from nearly one-third of reproductive age women in this country.
As a result, women are being denied essential health care and forced to carry pregnancies to term. Doctors fear prosecution simply for providing the care they’ve been trained and taken an oath to deliver.
The Dobbs decision upended fifty years of precedent and decades of progress on reproductive freedom, as abortion care is no longer constitutionally protected in the United States. Access to safe and effective reproductive health services now falls in the hands of individual state legislators, creating an everchanging landscape of chaos and confusion. Today, fourteen states in our country ban abortion with limited exceptions and a total of 21 states ban abortion at an earlier stage of pregnancy than was allowed before Dobbs. That means that while some states have moved to protect abortion access, too many others have implemented restrictive bans.
The end result? Women across our nation face a myriad of restrictions when seeking abortion care—they may be unsure if access to care they need is permissible in their state, or question whether they are too far along in pregnancy to receive the care that they need. These restrictions result in delays and denials of care that have devastating impacts on women’s health, economic security, mental and general wellbeing. Some patients are even forced to drive hours away across state lines just to find the abortion care they so urgently need. Research tells us that an additional 8 to 16 thousand people will travel to my home state of California to seek abortion care each year, as a consequence of the Dobbs ruling.
And research demonstrates that these restrictions are not felt equally. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 60 percent of all Black and Native Indigenous women of reproductive age live in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion. This is particularly troubling, as Black women already face the highest rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in this country—and experts warn that abortion restrictions will only work to exacerbate the maternal health crisis.
This afternoon, we’ll hear from Arizona-based witnesses who will highlight their experience, seeking and providing abortion care. We will also hear from national policy experts on the fight for reproductive freedom in every state.
In conclusion, I want us to recognize the gravity of the moment in which we are holding this hearing. After 50 years of precedent, the Dobbs decision and its aftermath have left our youngest Americans, like my nine-year-old daughter, with fewer rights than those who came before them. Think about that—our daughters, nieces, young relatives are now growing up in a world with fewer freedoms than we had. It is shameful that we are saddling these young leaders with fighting for the same battles that their grandparents fought and the battles that their parents thought they had won.
The promise of our nation has always been that each generation would work and sacrifice to ensure that the next generation would do better. The Dobbs decision and this patchwork of state laws has broken that promise. Our witnesses today are going to help us understand the impact of those broken promises, and based in their experiences are going to share with us how Congress can restore those promises to future generations.
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