Lawmakers Share Deeply Personal Stories of Their Own Abortions

Things got intensely personal Thursday at a House of Representatives hearing on reproductive rights. Reps. Cori Bush, Barbara Lee, and Pramila Jayapal shared their stories of choosing to have an abortion at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing, which focused on current threats to abortion rights including Texas' new heartbeat law and Supreme Court cases threatening Roe vs. Wade, while other lawmakers spoke out against abortion. Bush, Lee, and Jayapal had also talked about their experiences on MSNBC the night prior, USA Today reports. Details:

• Bush: The Missouri Democrat said she was 17 when she was raped by a man she met on a church trip, and recounted the abortion clinic workers who treated Black girls "like trash" while speaking respectfully to the white girls and women there, the Washington Post reports. "We live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice for us. So we deserve better. We demand better. We are worthy of better."

• Lee: She was just 16 when she got a "back-alley abortion" in Mexico in the 1960s. At the time, many were dying after unsafe abortions, she said, and she considered herself lucky to make it through. "I was one of those that survived and I think it's my duty now, as hard as this is, to talk about it. Because I know it's going to happen again if we don't stop what's taking place."
• Jayapal: After her first baby was born severely premature and weighing less than two pounds, she got pregnant again even though she was on birth control and realized she could not endure another high-risk pregnancy.
• Gloria Steinem: The 87-year-old journalist and activist also spoke at the hearing, "because I bet I’m one of the few people old enough to remember how bad it was when abortion was illegal," she said. If laws like Texas' are allowed to stand, "we will be very close to turning back the clock to the days of the 1950s, when one in three women had an illegal and a dangerous abortion," she warned.
• The other side: Some anti-abortion lawmakers also spoke at the hearing, including Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida, who shared that her mother was counseled to have an abortion because she had suffered a stroke while pregnant with Cammack's older sister, the AP reports. "I am grateful every single day that there were resources available for my mom," she said. "My mom survived. I survived, and I am a living, breathing witness of the power of life and the incredible choice that my own mother made.”
• "National sin": Another anti-abortion lawmaker, North Carolina's Rep. Virginia Foxx, called abortion a "national sin" and said, "Those of you who promote abortion wouldn’t be with us if your mothers had had an abortion. ... How can any woman say that her life is better because of abortion?”

(More abortion stories.)