Please contact Jackie Speier and thank her for speaking out about her abortion.
A debate about stripping Planned Parenthood of taxpayer money got personal on Thursday night when Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier revealed on the House floor that she’d once had an abortion herself.
Before the California congresswoman spoke, New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith — a fierce opponent of abortion — gave a graphic account of abortions that he read from a book.
Speier then stepped up to the mic and said she wouldn’t deliver her planned remarks because “the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots.”
“I’m one of those women he spoke about just now,” the 60-year-old said, explaining that she had an abortion at 17 weeks’ gestation because of medical complications.
“That procedure that you talked about was a procedure I endured. I lost a baby. But for you to stand on this floor and to suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous,” she added.
Its important to note that Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of health care services to women in the United States. Only a small percentage of their services are abortion services. And federal law already prohibits Planned Parenthood or any other provider from using public funds for abortion.