-I speak to you as one of the one in four women in America
who have had an abortion.
And for you to understand
how I ultimately decided to have an abortion,
I have to start earlier,
with the birth of my first child, Janak.
Janak was born at 26 1/2 weeks.
Janak was so small, they fit into the palm of my hand,
the size of a medium-sized squash.
For three months, we did not know if Janak would live or die.
They needed multiple blood transfusions,
had to be fed drop by drop,
and constantly had their heart stop and start.
The fact that Janak is a 25-year-old,
beautiful human being is a true miracle
and the greatest gift in my life.
As a new mom taking care of a very sick baby
and recovering from major surgery myself,
I was struggling.
My marriage did not survive.
We split custody of Janak,
and I was a part-time single parent.
Shortly after, I met a wonderful man who is my husband today.
I knew I was not ready to have another child,
so I religiously took my daily contraceptive pill.
Despite that, I became pregnant.
I consulted with my doctors,
who told me that any future pregnancy
would likely also be high risk to me and the child,
similar to what I had gone through with Janak.
I very much wanted to have more children,
but I simply could not imagine going through that again.
After discussions with my partner,
who was completely supportive of whatever choice I made,
I decided to have an abortion.
Two decades later, I think about those moments
on the table in the doctor's office,
a doctor who was kind and compassionate and skilled,
performing abortions in a state
that recognizes a person's constitutional right
to make their choices about their reproductive care.
For me, terminating my pregnancy was not an easy choice,
the most difficult I've made in my life,
but it was my choice.
And that is what must be preserved
for every pregnant person.
-Today I share for the first time publicly
a very difficult personal story,
hoping that it will help destigmatize
accessing abortion care.
But I'm compelled to speak out
because of the real risks of the clocks being turned back
to those days before Roe v. Wade,
to the days when I was a teenager
and had a back-alley abortion in Mexico.
I was raised in El Paso, Texas, and attended Catholic school,
so, of course, growing up, sex education was nonexistent.
Adolescent sexual and reproductive health
were not discussed in a meaningful way,
and because of that,
I honestly wasn't sure how you got pregnant.
Now, after grammar school, we moved to California.
And later, when I'd just turned 16, I missed my period.
I was confused, afraid, and unsure,
not knowing if I was pregnant or not.
I didn't know what to do.
Now, in those days, mind you -- this is in the mid-1960s --
women and girls were told if you didn't have a period,
you should take quinine pills, sit in a tub of water,
or use a coat hanger if nothing else worked.
My mother noticed I became introverted and very quiet,
so she asked me what was going on with me.
At that point, I told her everything.
I told her that I maybe, maybe not could be pregnant.
She responded with love.
She was supportive and sympathetic
and took me to the doctor, who confirmed I was pregnant.
Now, my mother asked me if I wanted to get an abortion.
She didn't demand or force me
but understood that this was my personal decision
and a choice that I needed to make
and she would support me regardless.
So once I made this decision prayerfully,
one of my mother's best friends in El Paso
helped me access the abortion I could not get in California.
When my mother told her what was going on,
she told my mother to send me to her in El Paso
because she knew of a good, competent,
and compassionate doctor --
yes, who had a back-alley clinic in Mexico.
Now, I was one of the lucky ones, Madam Chair.
A lot of girls and women in my generation didn't make it.
They died from unsafe abortions.
In the 1960s, unsafe, septic abortions
were the primary killer --
primary killer -- of African American women.
-Shortly after graduating,
I went on a church trip to Jackson, Mississippi.
I had many friends on that trip, and while there I met a boy,
a friend of a friend.
He was a little older than I was -- about maybe 20 years old.
That first day we met, we flirted, we talked on the phone.
While on the phone, he asked me could he come over to my room.
I answered the door...
and quietly told him he could come in,
imagining that we would talk and laugh,
like we had done over the phone.
But the next thing I knew, he was on top of me.
When he was done, he got up, he pulled up his pants,
and without a word, he left.
That was it.
I was confused. I was embarrassed.
I was ashamed.
I asked myself was it something that I had done?
About a month after the trip, I turned 18.
A few weeks later, I realized I had missed my period.
I reached out to a friend
and asked the guy from the church trip to contact me.
I waited for him to reach out, but he never did.
I never heard from him.
I was 18, I was broke, and I felt so alone.
I blamed myself for what had happened to me.
But I knew I had options.
I had known other girls who had gone to a local clinic
to get birth control and some who had gotten abortions.
So I looked through the Yellow Pages
and scheduled an appointment.
During my first visit, I found out
that I was nine weeks -- nine weeks pregnant.
And then, there, the panic set in.
How could I make this pregnancy work?
How could I, at 18 years old and barely scraping by,
support a child on my own?
And I would have been on my own.
I was stressed out, knowing that the father wouldn't be involved,
and I feared my parents would kick me out of the home --
the best parents in the world --
but I feared they would kick me out.
My dad was a proud father
and always bragging about his little girl
and how he knew I would go straight to college
and become attorney general.
That was his goal for me.
Choosing to have an abortion
was the hardest decision I had ever made,
but at 18 years old, I knew it was the right decision for me.
It was freeing, knowing I had options.
So to all the Black women and girls who have had abortions
and will have abortions,
we have nothing to be ashamed of.
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.
So that's why I'm here to tell my story.
So today I sit before you as that nurse, as that pastor,
as that activist, that survivor, that single mom,
that Congresswoman to testify that in the summer of 1994,
I was raped, I became pregnant, and I chose to have an abortion.