In a later exchange with Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), McNicholas was questioned about efforts to fight against protecting babies who survive botched abortion attempts.
"There is no way to oversimplify the medical conditions" of second trimester abortions, she said, noting that the "Born-Alive" act which would require doctors to give standard medical treatment to babies surviving abortions makes such botched abortions seem like a "real thing."
Stuckey testified in the minority.
Abortion advocates used to advertise "safe, legal, and rare" for the procedure, but now they champion abortion-on-demand through nine months of pregnancy, Stuckey said, despite evidence that doctors can feel a baby's heartbeat at six weeks gestation, and that babies can feel pain at 20 weeks, and survive outside the womb as early as 21 weeks.
"In speaking of abortion, its defenders ignore the existence of the child entirely," Stuckey said. "I am here as a woman who believes that female empowerment, equality and freedom are not defined by her ability to terminate the life of her child."
"I'm here as a human being, horrified by the violence, the oppression and the marginalization of a defenseless people group based solely on where they reside, the womb," Stuckey said.
Her testimony followed that of Box, who said she aborted her daughter because of a "fatal fetal diagnosis."
In her testimony in February before a Missouri state house committee, Box said her daughter was diagnosed with Trisomy 18. She said she was first informed that he daughter was at "high risk" of the chromosome abnormality when she was 13 weeks pregnant, in a May op-ed for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the baby "would likely die within minutes or hours of birth," if not before.
Most babies with Trisomy 18 die before birth, and only around ten percent survive the first year of life. Abortion rates are high for babies with fetal chromosomnal abnormalities such as Trisomy 18.
Fearing her daughter would have to endure a "life of immediate and repeated invasive medical intervention," Box said she and her husband chose to procure an abortion.
However, she did not have insurance coverage for the abortion, Box said. According to the Guttmacher Institute, private insurance in Missouri only covers abortions in cases where the mother's life is in danger. A Catholic hospital which delivered her two other children refused to perform the abortion.
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"My actual abortion procedure was the most compassionate care I have ever received from a. physician," Box said. "Jake and I left that day knowing that we made the most loving and merciful choice for our daughter."
In her op-ed in the Post-Dispatch, Box said she recently discovered she was pregnant but would not find out the results of pre-natal tests until she was 24 weeks pregnant. At the time, Missouri had just enacted several bans on abortions, including at 20 weeks post-gestation.
"When we got to the car I sobbed, 'At 24 weeks it will be illegal in Missouri to have an abortion,'" Box wrote. "I don't want to fly to Colorado to end this pregnancy if something goes wrong."
"I speak for Libby," she said on Thursday. "It is an honor to share her name with this committee and the country today. Libby Rose Box."
"I have a rose tattoo above my heart so that she is with me every day. I am her mother, and she is my daughter and will always be my daughter. I made decisions from day one as her mother, and then made the most important decision of Libby's life when together with my husband, we decided to terminate the pregnancy. It was a sacred, painful, personal decision."
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center, testified that "it's not lost on me" that abortion is under its gravest threat "on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, when some women first gained the right to vote."