Leah Vanden Bosch spoke on behalf of Planned Parenthood. She said she grew up in a conservative Christian Reformed home in Orange City. She’s a self-proclaimed “person of faith.” She had an abortion and, she said, has been forced to retell her traumatic history of health care over and over.
“I have risked everything to share my story,” she said. “Our Republican legislators, who have proven themselves to be anti-sexual and reproductive healthcare, have inflicted more pain into my life than I would give them the pleasure of describing. I would not be here without my abortion. Complete strangers now know my most private humiliating struggles.”
Those struggles, she said, do not include her abortion. They are instead her suicide attempt, eating disorder, anxiety and depression.
“And a decade-long recovery that no one in this room knows anything about,” she said. “It is dehumanizing for me to continue doing this, but I must as some legislators clearly don’t understand how abortion is a medically necessary procedure, as it was for me. HJR 2004 does not protect Iowans. I am an Iowan, you would’ve killed me. I feared for my life while pregnant and I would have taken it if you would’ve forced that pregnancy on me.”
She called the legislation dangerous, offensive and an invasion of privacy.
“Please understand there is no law that would’ve stopped me from terminating my pregnancy and stop pushing this dangerous, terrifying piece of legislation forward,” Vanden Bosch said.
