A former abortionist turned pro-life advocate told a House subcommittee that American young women have been conditioned to believe nothing should interfere with their right to control their reproductive organs.

During a hearing Wednesday of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice for what has become known as the “fetal heartbeat bill,” Dr. Kathi Aultman, associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told members of Congress, “We have shifted our priorities from basic human rights to women’s rights and have taught our young women that nothing should interfere with her right to do what they want with their bodies especially when it comes to pregnancy.”

Aultman – who had an abortion herself and has performed both first and second trimester abortions – said when she entered medical school she, too, believed access to abortion was a women’s rights issue. During special training in second trimester abortions, Aultman said she learned how to crush the fetus and remove the pieces of its body.

“I realize it is hard to imagine someone being able to do that and be so detached but because of my training and conditioning a human fetus seemed no different from the chick embryos I dissected in college,” she explained. “I could view them with strictly scientific interest devoid of any of the emotions with which I would normally view a baby. I wasn’t heartless, I just had been trained to compartmentalize these things.”

Aultman said, ultimately, she came to terms with the fact that, in performing abortions, she had become a “mass murderer,” because in every abortion, one of the live persons is killed.

The OB/GYN further explained that she came to encounter in her practice women who had been successful after deciding to have an unplanned baby – even more so than women who had abortions.

“That wasn’t what I was expecting,” Aultman testified. “I don’t believe women can remain unscathed after killing their child. At some point, usually after childbirth or the inability to get pregnant, the realization of what they did hits them.”

She said the narrative that women cannot achieve success in life if they do not have unrestricted access to abortion on demand has convinced young women that an “unwanted pregnancy is the worst thing that can happen to them and that their right to reproductive freedom is more important than their baby’s right to life.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), chairman of the subcommittee, introduced H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, which would restore legal protection to unborn babies once their heartbeat is detected.

“The core tenet is this: If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected,” King says about the measure.

In a column at Breitbart News, King writes that in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson “articulated fundamental truths” for the founding of the nation, including “rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

King says, however, that “judicial activism” has upended the nation’s “self-evident truths,” particularly in the area of abortion:

To this end, I have introduced H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act. H.R. 490 cuts through the obscuring haze of illogical judicial rhetoric and returns the right to life to the primacy our Founding Fathers intended. Under this legislation, abortionists who end the life of an unborn child whose heart is beating will be subject to imprisonment and/or a significant financial penalty. As a matter of law, the bill will ensure that if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected.

King says 170 members of Congress have signed onto the Heartbeat Protection Act.

“Congress should follow the lead of Thomas Jefferson and take this opportunity to declare its own independence from a deadly edict issued by judicial tyrants in Roe v. Wade,” the congressman writes. “Congress can do so by passing the Heartbeat Protection Act immediately and sending it to President Trump for his signature.”