Hearing Underscored Devastating Harm of Project 2025 on Democracy, Reproductive Freedom, Workers, Seniors, and More

“Every single woman who has died because of Trump abortion bans should be alive today. But what do we have instead? No compassion. No care. No justice. That’s not the America we should be.”

Video (YouTube)

WASHINGTON – Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), co-founder of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force and Region 12 Representative for the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, joined House Democratic Leadership and her colleagues on the Steering and Policy Committee to hold a historic hearing on Trump’s Project 2025 and its devastating impact on families across America.

Congresswoman Pressley, who also chairs the Pro-Choice Caucus’ Abortion Rights and Access Task Force, highlighted the harmful and deadly impact of abortion bans in America to date, and discussed the national abortion ban proposed by Trump’s Project 2025. Rep. Pressley also outlined in detail the shameful circumstances under which Amber Nicole Thurman died after being denied necessary abortion care in Georgia.

Featuring testimony from everyday people who know firsthand how the policies of Trump’s Project 2025 have or will hurt them and their families, the hearing explored the impact of proposals to criminalize abortion nationwide, hurt the middle class with higher costs and tax reform that advantages the wealthiest, and end Social Security and Medicare as we know it.

A full transcript of Congresswoman Pressley’s testimony is available below and full video is available here.

Transcript: At Historic Hearing on Project 2025, Pressley Spotlights Deadly Impact of Abortion Bans
September 24, 2024
U.S. Capitol

PART ONE

REP. PRESSLEY: For half a century, Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Roe protected the right of people in this country to make their own reproductive health care decisions, including the right to get an abortion.

Abortion care is routine medical care, but then Donald J. Trump became president. He campaigned on banning abortion care and even called to punish women for having abortions.

When Donald J. Trump took office, he appointed three extreme right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, and in June of 2022, just as Donald J. Trump promised they would, those three justices banded together with other Republican-appointed justices and overturned Roe.

They gave a green light for Republicans to criminalize abortion, to criminalize doctors and nurses in states across the country.

Today, one in three women in America lives under a Trump abortion ban. The consequences are being felt by people across this country who are denied the care they need and by providers who can no longer care for their patients, and we will hear from some of them today.

Donald J. Trump’s campaign to end Roe was a devastating, decisive step in a decades long Republican effort to make it impossible for women to get reproductive health care.

And while Republicans are now trying to run away from the consequences of their extreme agenda, they were jubilant the day that Roe was overturned and even promised to take it much further.

[VIDEO BEGINS]

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: There’s no right to abortion in the Constitution, and thankfully, the Supreme Court finally said that decisively, thanks be to God.

REP. JIM JORDAN: Mr. Speaker, let me first, first say God bless the United States Supreme

Court, and God bless President Trump for the people he selected for our highest court.

REP. ANDREW CLYDE: Thank you to the Supreme Court for removing the curse of abortion.

REP. ANN WAGNER: I am so incredibly grateful and gratified that the Supreme Court has finally overturned Roe versus Wade.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Today’s historic Supreme Court decision is a victory for the sanctity of life.

REP. STEVE SCALISE: But the work just begins now to go and protect life even more because the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, correcting that flawed decision, finally allows states and Congress to protect life in ways that we never were able to for the last 50 years.

[VIDEO ENDS]

REP. PRESSLEY: Republicans will not stop until abortion is criminalized nationwide. After all, just six pages into the more than 900 pages of Trump’s Project 2025 it says, “The Dobbs decision is just the beginning,” and we just saw how they celebrated the Dobbs decision.

PART TWO

[Gracie Ladd of Pennsylvania shares her story]

REP. PRESSLEY: Thank you for your courage, for sharing your story, for sharing Connor’s story.

I look forward to the day when people do not have to publicly uplift their trauma in order to compel action. And I’m deeply sorry for your loss. I’m devastated that your family and families across this nation have borne the burden of Trump’s abortion bans.

No one, no one in America should go through what you went through. You should be able to get the safe and necessary medical care you need in your own community.

We must restore reproductive freedom so what happened to you never, ever happens again. Women have already lost their lives. It is heartbreaking.

The last few days, I’ve been thinking of one woman: Amber Nicole Thurman.

A 28-year-old mom from Georgia, Amber was a dedicated mom to her six-year-old son. Every chance she got, she took her son to petting zoos, to pop up museums and on planned trips like one to a Florida beach.

‘The talks I have with my son are everything,’ she posted on social media. She loved her family deeply.

Trump-appointed justices overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Georgia began enforcing its abortion ban that very same day.

In August, Amber had a medication abortion in another state. She then went back home to Georgia.

Abortion pills are very safe. On rare occasions they require a follow up, surgical abortion if the body has not expelled the tissue fully. That is what happened in Amber’s case. She developed an infection, one that could have easily been treated with a routine procedure called a D and C.

But under George’s abortion ban, a doctor performing that procedure could go to prison for 10 years.

So when Amber shows up at the hospital, the question on doctors minds isn’t just how they can best care for Amber. It’s also what they have to do to comply with Georgia’s draconian law and to stay out of jail.

That’s never a choice that doctors should be faced with, but that’s exactly what happened in the case of Amber Thurman.

On August 18, Amber’s infection reaches a boiling point. She’s vomiting blood. Amber arrives at Piedmont Henry hospital in the city of Stockbridge at 6:51pm.

She suffers all night. She suffers all night.

By 5:14am, her vitals are dire, and Amber runs the risk of bleeding out.

At 6:45am – 12 hours from when she first arrived at the hospital – Amber is moved to the ICU. Her doctors look on as her condition worsens. They’ve now given her five liters of IV fluid to no avail.

7:14am. Amber’s doctors discuss initiating a D and C, the routine procedure to treat infections like hers. Nothing happens.

At noon, now five hours after Amber was moved to the ICU, a specialist reports that her condition is deteriorating. We are now 17 hours from when she was first admitted.

2pm. Amber is wheeled into the operating room as her vitals crash and blood pressure bottoms out.

Her mother is right there with her. As she heads into surgery, Amber turns to her and says, ‘Promise me you’ll take care of my son.’ That afternoon, Amber dies on the operating table.

Amber should be alive today. Every single woman who has died because of Trump abortion bans should be alive today.

But what do we have instead? No compassion, no care, and no justice. That’s not the America we should be.

—

In March 2024, Rep. Pressley was elected by acclamation to represent members of the New England Congressional delegation on the powerful House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which is responsible for appointing members of the House Democratic Caucus to committee seats and shaping caucus priorities.

Rep. Pressley is a founding member of a Congressional Task Force designed to stop Project 2025, a thousand-page blueprint for Donald Trump to seize “supreme” powers and radically undermine reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ equality, racial justice, free speech, and other democratic institutions and freedoms. The Task Force was announced by Rep. Huffman in June and its members are leaders on many of the issues currently under attack by Project 2025.

As a member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Pressley has repeatedly sounded the alarm on Project 2025, a bucket list extremist policies that would uproot every government agency and disrupt the lives of every person who calls America home.

• On September 19, 2024, Rep. Pressley and Rep. Huffman launched a confidential tip line and encouraging members of the public to come forward with any information about the hidden “Fourth Pillar” of Project 2025.
• On August 6, 2024, Rep. Pressley and Rep. Huffman wrote to Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, requesting that he come before Congress to discuss Project 2025 and release its undisclosed “180-Day Playbook.”
• On July 30, 2024, Rep. Pressley issued a statement on reports that Paul Dans is stepping down from his role as the head of Project 2025.
• On June 27, 2024, Rep. Pressley discussed the importance of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which combats discrimination in the workplace, and sharply criticized the harmful impact that far-right manifesto Project 2025 would have on the Department of Labor, the EEOC, and vulnerable workers.
• On June 17, 2024, Rep. Pressley joined Rep. Jared Huffman on a letter decrying the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr for crafting part of Project 2025 in his official capacity as an executive-level employee of the federal government.
• On June 14, Rep. Pressley was announced as a founding member of a Congressional Task Force designed to stop Project 2025 which was founded by Rep. Jared Huffman (CA-02).
• On June 12, 2024, Rep. Pressley outlined the damning link between Project 2025 and the Supreme Court’s corruption.
• In a May 2024 committee hearing, Rep. Pressley highlighted the harm of Project 2025’s plans to replace tens of thousands of civil servants with partisan sycophants and destroy government infrastructure.

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