I wish to share with you the beliefs of the National Council of Jewish Women, of which I am a lifetime member and Co-Chair of our Greater Washington Action Team.  We have an obligation to speak up for those who cannot, or do not have the ability to speak for themselves.

• Protecting safe, legal access to abortion is a moral imperative, rooted in our deeply held beliefs in social justice, moral agency and religious liberty for all.  As people of faith, we value every individual as a moral agent free to make personal health choices about their reproductive health based on their own beliefs and conscience.
• Abortion must not be singled out for regulation that applies to no similar medical care and does not significantly advance patient health or the safety of the procedure. When lawmakers place partisan, anti-abortion politics between patients and providers, they fundamentally jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant individuals.  
• For example, medically unnecessary restrictions like mandatory waiting periods, admitting privilege requirements, or regulations concerning physical facilities increase costs, decrease efficiency, and delay procedures. As a result, these draconian laws negatively impact the quality of safe and legal abortion and shutter clinics. 
• Further, a woman’s power to make her own, faith-informed decisions is obstructed when she is required to receive inaccurate or misleading information or clinically unnecessary services like ultrasounds, in-person counseling, and waiting periods.

I hope you will seriously consider the consequences that these regulations place onto a woman who does not realize that she has to make such a decision for herself, and do it quickly.  Please act by doing the right thing and keep abortion safe and legal, not any more difficult than it needs to be.  Remove these non-sensical regulations!

Sincerely,

Joan P. Hunn

Co-Chair, National Council of Jewish Women Greater Washington Action Team