Jayapal TORCHES Chip Roy in Abortion Hearing for ‘Outrageous’ Comments: ‘Do Not Be Paternalistic Towards Us’
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Texas’s controversial abortion law on Thursday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) absolutely laid into Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) for his “paternalistic” attitude toward women.
At issue in the hearing was S.B. 8 in Texas, which is a highly unusual anti-abortion law that doesn’t rely on state enforcement, but rather allows private citizens to sue people they think have assisted a woman in getting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The law is also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, so named because six weeks is around the time fetal cardiac activity can be detected. As many critics of the law have pointed out, many if not most women do not even know they are pregnant at six weeks.
On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments, during which a majority of justices appeared to be at least somewhat skeptical about whether it is constitutional.
“One word that has been consistently missing from colleagues on the other side of the aisle today is ‘heartbeat,'” said Roy during Thursday’s hearing. “Because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t want to start with the concept of heartbeat.
“Every one of us in this room has a heartbeat,” he said.
Democrats are “starting from the premise not from the starting place of life and trying to defend life, but from the standpoint of law with respect to our current abortion law,” said Roy, in the Judiciary Committee hearing.
Roy added that Democrats “want to fixate” on Supreme Court precedents such as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
He concluded his remarks by reiterating, “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will not want to, have not wanted to talk about the heartbeat because they know it undermines their position.”
It was Jayapal’s turn:
I think some of you know that I am one of the one in four women in America who has had an abortion. And I testified about that recently. I first told my story two years ago when this rash of bills was starting to come up, and I told it after more than a decade. I actually hadn’t even told my mother about it before I wrote an op-ed in the paper. For me it was actually a very difficult decision to make. It isn’t for everybody, and I don’t think it should have to be.
So, you know Mr. Roy, you’re right. We have have different starting places. I start with the Constitution. I start with the Constitution and I start with the constitutional right that I have to make choices about my own body. And I also am very offended by the idea that anybody on your side would call me a murderer for making a choice about my health and my body that you cannot even begin to understand or know what I was dealing with. So please, do not be paternalistic towards us as we make choices that are our choices. Nobody knows the circumstances we go through. Nobody understands what we have to think about. And by the way, nobody except us – the pregnant person – is actually the person that is affected along with anybody that we choose to bring in. And you know what? I would like to leave protecting my health to my doctor and me.
Jayapal added that those who receive abortions should not be “traumatized by being called a murderer. That is just outrageous in my mind.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
