Brooklyn, N.Y. – Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke today announced that she has become a co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that eliminates many restrictions that states have used to undermine each woman’s right to choose.

In recent years, thirty states have enacted more than one-hundred and fifty laws intended to re-duce access to abortion and related health procedures. The bill would prohibit restrictions on abortions that are not applied to other medical procedures and are not intended to protect the health and safety of women.

“Women – not the members of a state legislature or the United States Congress – should have the authority to control their health care decisions. Both the common law and the decisions of our Supreme Court such as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey confirm that health care choices, particularly the decision to have children, are the responsibility of individual women, not their elected representatives,” said Congresswoman Clarke. “We cannot continue to allow the imposition of often absurd requirements on health care providers to limit these choices.”

The methods used to restrict women’s health care choices include: targeted restrictions on abor-tion providers that impose unreasonable requirements on health care centers, prohibitions of non-surgical abortion, biased counseling intended to influence a woman’s choices, and unnecessary waiting periods.

U.S. Representative Yvette D. Clarke is a member of the House Committee on Small Business, Ethics, and Homeland Security, where she is the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies. She represents many neighborhoods in central and southern Brooklyn, NY which include Brownsville, Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Gerritsen Beach, Madison, Midwood, parts of Park Slope and Flatlands, Prospect Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Sheepshead Bay, and Windsor Terrace.