The National Organization for Women Political Action Committee is proud to announce our endorsement of Lois Herr for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 16th District. Lois is taking on the all-important challenge of unseating Rep. Joe Pitts, co-author of the outrageous Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Lois rightly called this amendment “a direct attack on the freedom and privacy of American women.”
Once again, women’s reproductive rights are under attack in this country. Anti-choice legislators are using health care reform as an opportunity to further restrict women’s access to abortion. One such plunderer is Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Pitts, who co-authored an amendment to deny millions of women abortion coverage, and then when the Stupak-Pitts Amendment passed, Pitts voted against the main bill anyway.
The Associated Press reports that Scott Roeder has confessed to shooting late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in May at a Wichita church. Roeder told AP he intends to use the so-called necessity defense at his trial — arguing he was protecting unborn children. “The absurdity of his defense is insulting and dangerous to women, but it also reveals his terrorist methodology using murder to accomplish his political goals,” says NOW President Terry O’Neill.
The House of Representatives has dealt the worst blow to women’s fundamental right to self-determination in order to buy a few votes for reform of the profit-driven health insurance industry. We cannot and will not support a health care bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion.
Health care is a human right. Nobody should be without it; not in this country, not anywhere.