A pair of doctors testified Tuesday to Congress about how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has left them feeling helpless when patients seek abortions.

The Democratic-led House Oversight and Reform Committee held the hearing, which it described as examining the harm abortion restrictions have caused and the threat of a national abortion ban.

Dr. Nisha Verma, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said she is “terrified” for women in Georgia, where she is practicing OB-GYN and where abortions are now banned after six weeks of pregnancy.

Six weeks “is before some people know they are pregnant and long before many of my patients received diagnoses of dangerous medical conditions or fetal anomalies that complicate their pregnancies and endanger their health,” Verma said. “Because of a law that is not based in medicine or science, I am forced to turn away patients that I know how to care for.”

Dr. Bhavik Kumar, medical director for primary and trans care at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston, told lawmakers, “Unlike the people who pass abortion bans, or uphold them in court, I actually have to face those who are harmed.”

Texas bans abortions at fertilization unless there is “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy.”

Kumar gave examples that included victims of rape and incest, women who are already mothers and struggling to make ends meet by working multiple jobs, college students “with their whole lives ahead of them” and women who became extremely sick during pregnancy.

“Over and over again, we are forced to violate our conscious and our training to turn away patients who need us,” Kumar said. “There's nothing more inhumane, cruel or unethical than having to deny people the essential health care they seek in their time of need.”

Another witness, Kelsey Leigh, testified that she had to terminate a welcomed pregnancy at 22 weeks after an ultrasound revealed her son would have lived a life of “pain and suffering.”

“He wasn't moving,” Leigh said. “His limbs and neck were deformed. His umbilical cord had a structural anomaly. If my pregnancy continued, he likely wouldn't have had the ability to swallow, he may not have been able to breathe, and his bones would have broken during delivery, no matter the method.”

Shortly after her abortion, Leigh successfully fought against a bill in her home state of Pennsylvania that would have restricted abortions like hers at 20 weeks.

“If that ban had been moving a few weeks earlier or my pregnancy had been timed differently, I would have been legislated about without ever being talked to,” she said.

Democrats and Republicans on the committee accused each other as having extreme positions on abortion.

Democrats said the GOP, after getting its wish to put abortion laws back in the hands of state legislatures, have now set their sights on banning and criminalizing abortion nationwide. They cited Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill, introduced earlier this month, that would restrict abortions at 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest or life-threatening emergencies for the mothers. 

The Oversight Committee also released an analysis saying GOP governors signed into law approximately 127 laws banning or restricting abortions from 2017-21 and congressional Republicans introduced 52 bills since 2021 to ban or restrict the procedure nationwide.

“Republicans are showing us the American that they envision,” said committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. “It is a place that limits women's freedom and imposes government control over our bodies and our choices. It is an America where a politician can force a woman to give birth against her will regardless of the consequences for her health, for the woman and for her family.”

GOP members of the committee, meanwhile, sought to cast Democrats as radicals who support abortions up until the moment of birth. They repeatedly pointed to Democrats’ overwhelming support in May for the Women’s Health Protection Act that aimed to codify Roe v. Wade, a bill that failed in the Senate. 

“This bill reveals their agenda for the United States — abortion on demand until birth in every state,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.

An Associated Press fact check in May found that Republicans’ claims that Democrats voted to legalize aborting a full-term baby are misleading.

Experts say the example is unrealistic and distorts the reality of abortion late in pregnancy. Abortions in the third trimester, which are extremely rare, typically occur because of a significant fetal abnormality, experts say. The Women’s Health Protection Act sought to maintain the constitutional standard under Roe that allowed states to restrict abortions after fetal viability — the stage when a fetus is likely to survive outside the womb — but required exceptions for risks to maternal life or health.

Republican lawmakers argued Thursday that abortion bans are needed to protect the lives of the unborn.

“Fifty years ago in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court tragically strayed from the text of the Constitution and took away from the American people the power to decide the question of abortion for themselves,” said Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. “This constitutionally illiterate decision resulted in the death of over 63 million unborn Americans.”

Added Rep. Fred Keller, R-Pa.: “It's not radical to defend life. That's in our founding documents — ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ You can't have liberty and pursue happiness if you're not born.”

The lawmakers and witnesses, meanwhile, debated whether abortion care is a form of health care and whether there is a consensus among the medical community on the issue.

Verma testified that “abortion is necessary, compassionate, essential health care” and “when abortion is difficult or impossible to access, complicated health conditions can worsen and even result in death.”

She noted that the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology has declared that safe and legal abortion is essential to reproductive health and that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said abortion is health care. 

But Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, a North Carolina OB-GYN and former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, argued that the fact that just 7% of American OB-GYNs in private practice performed abortions as of 2018 proves there is no consensus. She said she think the other 93% “feel that abortion is morally wrong, and they won't perform it.”

Wubbenhorst, who was called to testify by Republicans, said she does not believe abortions are a form of health care. 

“Abortion is defined by CDC as an intervention that is intended to terminate a suspected entry during pregnancy and does not result in a live birth,” she said. “The goal of any abortion is therefore to kill the embryo or fetus, which is a human being.”

The hearing was held 40 days before the congressional midterm elections, which could feel the impact of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll this month, 62% of registered voters said they strongly or somewhat oppose the ruling, compared to just 30% who support it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.