Barbara Lee Condemns High Court Decision on Abortion Ban

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Barbara Lee Condemns High Court Decision on Abortion Ban

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) condemned the Supreme Court decision to overturn the decision of six lower courts and uphold a nationwide ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions and spoke out in favor of a bill that would codify the rights affirmed by the Roe v. Wade decision as law at a press conference on Capitol Hill today.

"The Supreme Court's alarming decision yesterday was an attack on women, an attack on women's rights and an attack on women's health and it should not be allowed to stand," said Lee. "It will send doctors to jail for performing the procedure that they believe to be the safest for a given woman it sets the dangerous precedent of substituting politics for sound medical decision making."

Lee spoke out in favor of the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation introduced today by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in the House and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in the Senate, of which Lee is an original cosponsor. The legislation would for the first time, codify the rights guaranteed under the Constitution by Roe v. Wade. It would bar government - at any level - from interfering with a woman's fundamental right to choose to bear a child or to terminate a pregnancy. The bill's introduction follows yesterday's Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, in which the Court has, for the first time since Roe v. Wade, allowed an abortion procedure to be criminalized.

"We cannot let right wing extremists take us back to the days of back alley abortions," said Lee. "We need to pass the Freedom of Choice Act and ensure that politicians will not be able to interfere in decisions that should take place between women and their doctors."

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