Norton To Work With National Groups To Defeat Senate Republican Bill Attacking D.C. Women, Home Rule

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said today that she will fight a sweeping national anti-choice Senate Republican bill that picks out the District of Columbia's women for harsh treatment, even beyond the other women of the country, who are also targets of the bill. The bill would, among other things, permanently prohibit the District of Columbia government from spending its local funds on abortion services for low-income women, prohibit D.C. government employees from providing abortions, prohibit abortions in D.C. government facilities, and define the D.C. government as part of the federal government for the purposes of abortion. The bill, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (S. 582), introduced by Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) with 39 Republican cosponsors, is the companion to a bill (H.R. 7) that the House passed in January. Most of the bill's provisions gut reproductive choice, such as a provision that denies the Small Business Tax Credit to employers that provide their workers with health insurance that includes abortion services. Norton will hold a national roundtable on the dangerous threats to reproductive choice for the nation's women.

"With the District's women picked out and picked on for worse treatment, Republicans are bent on coming for the reproductive choice of women throughout the U.S. now that they control both houses of Congress," Norton said. "Senator Wicker shows with this bill that they are prepared to take down as much reproductive choice as they can get away with, just as they target D.C.'s local women in violation of their professed support for limiting the power of the federal government, for increasing local control of local affairs, and for federalism. They think they can get away with throwing aside the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 to snatch power away from a local government, but they have come for the rest of the women in the country as well."

Seventeen states use their state and local funds to provide abortions for low-income women. In fact, of the cosponsors of S. 582, three are from states--Montana and Arizona--that use their funds to provide abortions for low-income women--Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Steve Daines (R-MT).

Source