Renee Bracey Sherman Testifies Before House Committee on Oversight and Reform
On July 19, 2022, We Testify's executive director Renee Bracey Sherman testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing about her abortion experience, the connection to racial and economic justice, and the self-managed abortion protocol making her the first person in history to ever to do so in the Congressional record.
Renee Bracey Sherman’s Remarks:
Good morning members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It is my distinct honor to speak to you this morning and serve my country in this way. My name is Renee Bracey Sherman and I am the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions.
Like many of your constituents and loved ones, I had an abortion. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Period. I’ve been to several Congressional hearings before, often seated behind the We Testify storytellers. It takes courage for them to sit here, to open up their hearts and life histories, and share how they have been impacted by barriers that make abortion more costly, more inaccessible, and less rooted in the best practices of medicine.
The bans and restrictions are designed to shame us and make abortion hard or impossible to access. These situations are tragic – not only because people must remain pregnant when they don’t want to be, often while caring for the children they already have – but because the very leaders who force them to do so also block child tax credits and Medicaid expansion, and refuse to engage in conversations about paid parental or sick leave, affordable childcare, or create a national healthcare system. And, once these children are born, immigrant children are caged apart from their families, trans children are turned into political fodder, young students are murdered in their schools, and Black and Brown parents live in anxiety about the day their children encounter the police.
These issues are not separate from abortion: they are the realities we consider when weighing whether we want to bring another life into this country. This is what reproductive justice is about: the ability for all of us—especially people of color—to be able to decide if, when, and how to grow our families, and be able to do so free from state-sanctioned coercion, oppression, and violence.
Despite the abortion bans, many people are and will still get abortions, but far from home and at great expense. I care for them regularly. I am one of the thousands of volunteers with local abortion funds who receive them into our cars, homes, and communities. This community care is being criminalized, not because it is wrong, but because anti-abortion legislators think it’s a good policy to criminalize Americans for showing up for each other.
No one should be prosecuted for the outcomes of our pregnancies, whether it is a miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. Neither should the providers or helpers who care for us. One in four of us will have an abortion in our lives. Everyone loves someone who has abortions. Ask yourself: who do you love that you’d be willing to lock up, simply because they had abortions?
I feel so lucky that, when I was 19, my Abortion Care Network clinic was 10 minutes from my home, and the Orthodox Jewish nurse who held my hand did so because her faith called her to. But that almost wasn’t my story. Shortly before my appointment, I didn’t know if I could hold on. I didn’t think I could be pregnant for another moment. I hoped it would all go away. When it didn’t, every day I considered throwing myself down the stairs as I had seen in movies and history books. One night, I drank an unsafe amount of alcohol, believing it would cause a miscarriage. It didn’t.
Thankfully, I went to my appointment and received my abortion—that was when it was legal in every state. Now it is not, and I know some will try the methods I did. I want them to know that there are safe ways to self-manage their abortions according to the World Health Organization. It’s one mifepristone pill followed by four misoprostol pills dissolved under the tongue 24-48 hours later, or a series of 12 misoprostol pills, four at a time dissolved under the tongue every three hours. There’s no way to test it in the bloodstream and a person doesn’t need to tell police what they took. I share that to exercise my right to free speech because there are organizations and legislators who want to make what I just said a crime. Everyone loves someone who needs abortions.
As I close, I’d like to say that I have been sharing my story for over a decade, but for a long time, I thought my cousin Nora and I were the only ones in our family who’d had abortions. But, as I shared my story, others shared theirs. Many in my family had abortions. They joined me as some of the 6,641 people who’ve had abortions and signed our amicus brief in the Dobbs case. Our abortions are just one of the many factors shaping our families. I owe my life to abortion; not only my own but because, shortly after Roe v. Wade, a Black woman was able to have an abortion in Illinois. She was in a relationship that wasn’t right for her, and her abortion allowed her to move on, attend nursing school, marry a fellow student, and have a child with him. That child was me. As my mother told me, “Renee, I chose you.” That’s exactly what abortion is about: the ability for all of us to choose if, when, and how to create our families, on our own terms.
I am proud to testify here today to not only represent my mother’s choices and my own but all of us who’ve had abortions. On behalf of the over one hundred We Testify abortion storytellers I say this: give us back our abortions, at any time and for any reason, anywhere in this country.
Thank you.
Renee Bracey Sherman
Founder & Executive Director
We Testify
