Written Testimony of Dr. Ingrid Skop on Interstate Travel for Abortion
On June 12, Charlotte Lozier Institute VP of Medical Affairs Dr. Ingrid Skop testified on the issue of interstate travel for abortion before the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The hearing, titled “Crossing the Line: Abortion Bans and Interstate Travel for Care After Dobbs,” involved a number of panelists with a variety of perspectives on recent state abortion limits.
In her written testimony, Dr. Skop responded to several misconceptions about the alleged need for women to travel out of state for abortion. Among the misconceptions Dr. Skop addressed was that women need to travel out of states with abortion limits in order to receive life-saving treatment. Correcting the record, Dr. Skop noted that every state with pro-life protections provides exceptions for cases in which the mother’s life is in danger, and that this danger need not be immediate. She also explained the many dangers of women using mail-order abortion drugs, shipped across state lines, without proper physician oversight and care, a result of recent FDA decisions to loosen or remove a variety of patient protections for the abortion drug mifepristone.
Dr. Skop testified:
Our nation has endured more than 50 years of the failed experiment of offering abortion as the solution to women’s problems … Women need us to do better and offer real support for their challenges, not the violence of ending the lives of their children. I would like to see our country turn in a different direction, to return to the belief that children are a blessing, not a burden, and that women are strong and courageous enough to bring forth the next generation of children to enrich our country and the world. As a doctor who has spent my entire career caring for both my patients – mom and baby – I urge us all to offer them real care and support.
Other issues addressed by Dr. Skop included the danger of coercion involved in the unsupervised use of abortion drugs, the myth that abortion improves maternal mortality, and misinformation about “fetal abnormalities” requiring abortion. Dr. Skop’s full written testimony can be accessed by clicking the “Print/Download” button above, and her oral testimony can be viewed here.
