Bay Area Rep. Jackie Speier stuns House colleagues with story of her abortion - San Jose Mercury News
t happened nearly two decades ago, in the most personal and painful of moments. Jackie Speier, 17 weeks pregnant, was losing a baby she desperately wanted. She miscarried, with the fetus slipping from her uterus, and doctors told her the baby wouldn’t survive.
Agonizingly, Speier and her physician husband terminated the pregnancy.
Minutes before midnight Thursday, that unbearably emotional experience came pouring out in the most public way when the 60-year-old Democratic congresswoman from San Mateo spoke about her abortion to stunned colleagues on the floor of the House.
“I lost a baby,” Speier began softly, admonishing Republicans for graphically describing the procedure she had endured. “But for you to stand on this floor and to suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous.”
By Friday, her three-minute speech had gone viral on the Internet, with many Americans lauding her courage.