Chris Smith Tries to Restrict and Control Women’s Rights

Chris Smith has always tried to restrict and control women’s reproductive rights while deceiving the public.

Smith is vehemently anti-choice, and uses abortion to limit women’s healthcare access at home and abroad. He even attacks institutions that mention abortions but do not perform them. This jeopardizes the other essential services that Planned Parenthood and international aid organizations provide, (usually to poor women with no alternative).

Smith claims abortions harm mothers physically and psychologically, but a study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found no evidence.
Smith says some birth control is acceptable, but votes to restrict access and allow employers to fire women who use it. He’s also against anything that prevents implantation, meaning the IUD and pill, which occasionally do this, are unacceptable “abortifacients.”

Never mind the many health reasons women take birth control, or the economic, educational, and social freedom it provides. Smith says no.

Smith claims he allows abortions in cases of rape. But when restricting federal funding for abortion in 2011 by expanding the Hyde Amendment, he authored HR3, which reclassified rape as “forcible rape.” The term was undefined in the law but historically excluded statutory rape, required victims to sufficiently resist, or prove a credible threat of force and a “reasonable belief” that resistance would not have prevented the rape. These unnecessary hurdles extend the amount of time victims must carry a pregnancy from rape. If 20 weeks pass, Smith believes it must be carried to term.

Additionally, “forcible rape” was not included in the 1976 Hyde Amendment. Smith had to add it to HR3. He has made no attempt to clarify his intentions.

Josh Welle, Smith’s opponent, believes women should make their own reproductive and health choices. Full stop. On November 6th, vote Smith’s unacceptable quest for control out of office.