Kent County Times

Washington, D.C. - Ahead of the one-year mark of the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, Representative Seth Magaziner signed on to a discharge petition to force a vote on H.R.12 - Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that would enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law.

A discharge petition is a motion to have a bill released from its committee of jurisdiction. Once discharged, the legislation is then taken up for a vote on the floor. This motion requires a majority of the House (218 voting members) to sign the petition and vote in favor of the measure.

“The Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade reversed nearly a half-century ofprecedent and ripped away the right to an abortion for millions of women across the country,” said Rep. Magaziner. “Almost overnight, women woke up having less rights than their mothers. This is completely unacceptable – and as a member of the Pro-Choice Caucus, I signed on to a discharge petition to force House leadership to vote on a bill that would restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.”

Rep. Magaziner is an original cosponsor of  H.R.12 - Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which is the only legislation that enshrines the principles of Roe v. Wade into law. WHPA creates a statutory right for health care providers to provide abortion care and for their patients to receive that care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions that single out abortion and impede access.

After the Supreme Court’s extreme decision last summer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the impact on reproductive health was swift and catastrophic. In the first 100 days post-Dobbs, at least 66 clinics in 15 states stopped offering abortion services. The average travel time to an abortion facility in the U.S. has more than tripled post-Dobbs. 

One year later, abortion care is now inaccessible in 14 states and heavily restricted in many others—with 1 in 3 women and over one fifth of the American public now living without abortion access. Attacks on reproductive health care have not let up, with anti-abortion Republican lawmakers and activists in states across the country pushing for even more extreme abortion bans, weaponizing the court system to attack medication abortion drugs, and advancing laws that would put doctors at risk of prosecution, punish women seeking abortion care and those who help them, and criminalize interstate travel to obtain abortion care. Several lawmakers have even considered a national ban on abortion.

Issues: Reproductive Rights

Original source can be found here.