Congressional Hearing on Abortion Focuses on Roe v. Wade, Helping Women 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 3, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A Congressional subcommittee held a hearing on abortion on Thursday and focused on the misconceptions some people have about the legality of abortion if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned. It also featured advocates who help women in various unplanned pregnancy situations.
Rep. Steve Chabot, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, oversaw the hearings.
Chabot said he wanted to set the record straight about abortion after Roe is overturned someday.
He indicated that the assumption that abortion would be illegal nationwide is wrong. Instead, states would be free, like they were before Roe, to make abortion illegal if they desired.
"The public thinks, for the most part, that if Roe versus Wade was struck down, abortion would be illegal. That’s not the case," he said. "It would go back to the states and people would have more of a voice in it."
According to a Cincinnati Enquirer report, Chabot said that having two new justices on the Supreme Court and the high court agreeing to hear a case later this year on partial-birth abortions meant the abortion debate was alive and well.
Chabot helped write the partial-birth abortion ban that President Bush signed into law.
Cinny Roy, who runs two pregnancy centers in Cincinnati, told the committee that many people do not recognize the years of emotional and psychological trauma abortion causes many women.
She knows what she’s talking about.
Roy had an abortion and has spent the better part of two decades trying to cope with the whirlwind of negative emotions she’s battled since then.
In 1996, she finally told someone about her abortion and joined a recovery group that helped her have the courage to help other women avoid abortions.
"My life has not been the same since," Roy said, according to the Enquirer.
