Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act

Floor Speech

Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, which is yet another misleading bill that purports to help women, when in reality it takes away their freedom to control their own reproductive health. Mr. Speaker, we should be talking about jobs, but instead we're spending time on this divisive issue.

We can all agree that women should not choose to terminate a pregnancy based solely on gender, but this bill criminalizes a legal procedure and puts doctors in the role of legal and moral arbiter, and could give almost anyone who asserts an interest an effective veto over a woman's intimate personal health care decision.

This bill is another attempt to limit a woman's ability to make her own decisions about her life and her health. It will restrict the rights of women to obtain a completely legal and constitutionally protected medical procedure. If we want to truly and effectively address the issue of gender-selective abortion--a problem much more pervasive in other parts of the world--there are much better ways to do it than making suspects out of women and criminals out of doctors.

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