In addition, because this bill would go into effect immediately, it is likely to raise taxes even on people who wished to drop or amend their coverage, for they would already be locked into a plan.

The bills would also allow hospitals that refuse to take necessary steps to save a woman’s life to receive federal tax dollars. Let’s suppose a pregnant woman was brought into a hospital with a life-threatening hemorrhage, and an abortion was necessary to save her life, but the hospital or providers would not perform the procedure. The woman dies.

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If this bill passed, it would be against the law for the federal government to hold this hospital fiscally accountable. So this legislation could open the door to subsidizing hospitals that chose to allow a woman to die, rather than perform an abortion.

These bills go far beyond restrictions in current law and threaten the reproductive freedom of all American women. In addition, they continue the new House leadership’s refusal to focus on getting our economy going and creating jobs.

Women are now half the U.S. workforce, and mothers the primary or co-breadwinner in almost two-thirds of American families. They are indispensable to the country’s economic prosperity.

Nearly six million women are now unemployed. And those that do work earn only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns.

Rather than trying to help create jobs or narrow the pay equity gap for the millions of mothers struggling to support their families, Republicans are instead focused on legislation that would eat away at women’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.

With the return of Republican leadership, the culture wars are back and more harmful than ever to women and their families. We should be focusing on jobs and enhancing the rights of all Americans — not trying to take them away.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) serves as the vice chair of the House Subcommittee on Health.