“Today, on the 35th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, we must commit to securing the right to choose for all women, and to greater investment in preventing unintended pregnancy.

While we applaud the reduction in the number of abortions in this country, it is important to note that abortion remains a critical health service. Half of pregnancies in this nation are unintended. We will only change that if we fully fund family planning services and make comprehensive sex education that stresses abstinence, but also teaches the full benefits of contraception, available to teens. We aren’t doing that today.

And our right to choose is at grave risk. President Bush has transformed our courts, appointing judges and justices who do not recognize women’s fundamental right to privacy and to make our own reproductive health care decisions. At the same time, too many members of Congress and state lawmakers are willing to restrict this right from laws that declare a fertilized egg to be a person, to laws that interfere with doctors’ decisions about the best procedure to use in a specific case.

America is a pro-choice nation. Few people want to return to the days when a woman had to risk her health or even her life to terminate a pregnancy. That’s why voters will be asking candidates for office at all levels this year whether they will protect an individual’s right to make these personal decisions without intrusion from government. We expect reproductive health to be a voting issue this year.”