On a panel made up of women both for and against a proposed federal law on abortion, Atlanta lawyer and Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington Tuesday about how Georgia's own restrictions on abortion are affecting women.

“Every one of the women I know has a story. They've lost children. They've wanted children. They've taken care of children. They've birthed children,” Jordan said. “When we see legislators who really have no idea what that experience is like to try to legislate, you know, it's dumbfounding.”

Jordan spoke during a two-hour hearing on a Republican-backed bill that would ban abortion nationwide at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Jordan said in Georgia—a predominately Republican state—even some Republican woman are “outraged” at what they're seeing from lawmakers.

“Because they know that, at the end of the day, no woman takes any of this lightly. You don't walk into a doctor's office wanting to get a horrible diagnosis,” Jordan said. “I wish they would just trust us to make the right decision with respect to our own lives and our own bodies and our children.”

Jordan became an internet phenomenon after her impassioned speech on the Georgia Senate floor in a lost effort to stop approval of a six-week abortion ban passed by the General Assembly last month. A video of her speech went viral on YouTube. During the speech, she told a deeply personal story of her own grief after eight miscarriages and contended that Georgia's new law could subject women to prosecution and prison not only for seeking an abortion but for losing a pregnancy naturally—and possibly even for lacking access to proper prenatal care.

But the focus of Jordan's remarks Tuesday was a 20-week ban required by state law, which Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law seven years ago. Current Gov. Brian Kemp campaigned on a pledge to pass the toughest abortion law in the country and immediately kept his promise after taking office in January. Kemp is expected to sign the six-week ban legislation into law any day.

Jordan was part of a panel of five women speaking to the committee now chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who sponsored what is titled the “Pain Capable Unborn Children Act.” Graham emphasized the testimony of Dr. Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Harrison said a fetus feels pain at 20 weeks and would be given anesthesia separately from the mother for prenatal surgery. Harrison made her points in her testimony, but Graham made them in advance in his introduction, then made them again after in his summary. Also, at the request of Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, Harrison described in graphic detail what happens in a late-term abortion.

The panel included two additional anti-abortion speakers. Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, told a horror story of how she, while in utero, survived a saline-induced abortion demanded by her grandmother, a nurse, when her 19-year-old mother was 31 weeks pregnant. She said she learned the disturbing truth at age 14, after her adoptive mother used it to try to stop her sister from ending an unintended pregnancy.

Also speaking in favor of restricting abortion was Catherine Glenn Foster, president and CEO of Americans United for Life. Foster said law is needed to “protect pre-born children who feel pain.”

Jordan and one other woman spoke in favor of keeping abortion fully legal. Dr. Valerie Peterson, director of partnership development at Equal Opportunity Schools in Dallas, told a tragic personal story of terminating a pregnancy after learning the baby's brain was fatally malformed. She was 16 weeks pregnant when the devastating diagnosis came. Once she made her difficult decision, she was put on a waiting list that caused a delay of two to three weeks. That bumped her up against the 20-week abortion ban in Texas, so she had to fly to another state for the procedure, she testified. This situation would deny medical care to poor women, she said.

Ranking committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, invited Jordan, who spoke and entered written testimony on the ramifications of Georgia's 20-week ban. Since its passage in 2012, that law “has had a profound and deadly effect” for women, Jordan said.

“Whether that is the intent or not, it is certainly the outcome,” Jordan said. “I have seen it in my rural, South Georgia hometown just as I have seen it in the Atlanta metro area. Currently, it is exceedingly difficult to get an abortion in Georgia, but it is just as difficult to give birth in Georgia. No doubt in part [due] to the 20-week-ban, there are no winning options for many of the women of this state.”

Jordan said half of Georgia counties do not have a single obstetrician-gynecologist. She said 31 of the state's hospital labor and delivery departments have closed over the last 21 years—19 in rural areas. Only 59 of Georgia's 159 counties have a labor and delivery unit. And 17 rural hospitals have closed in the past decade.

“Rural counties and the women that live in them have been the hardest hit,” Jordan said. “And if there is any doubt, since the passage of Georgia's 20-week-ban in 2012, we have seen the maternal mortality rate double in Georgia. I do not believe this is a coincidence.”

As for the new, six-week ban, Jordan said that law—if it were to withstand legal challenges—would only make matters worse for the health of Georgia women and children.

“Although the state of Georgia ranks 50 out of 50 states for maternal mortality, it has not sought to expand access to health care to poor women in rural Georgia. It has now acted to do the opposite,” Jordan said. She noted that House Bill 481 won final passage March 29. What proponents call the Heartbeat Bill “mirrors” legislation already passed in Iowa, Missouri and Tennessee. Kentucky is now debating a similar law.

Jordan said all the “heartbeat bills” share scientific inaccuracies and ban abortion often before a woman discovers she is pregnant.

“It is difficult to fix something that is so wrong from the start. This bill and every other one just like it are patently unconstitutional. It is so by design,” Jordan said. “I don't doubt the conviction of those who believe that abortion bans are necessary. However, a deeply held conviction does not allow one to adopt a view counter to scientific and legal fact.”

She said that, as part of the “personhood movement,” Georgia's new law “attempts to establish that a zygote, an embryo, a fertilized egg at 5.5 weeks has a beating heart. This is simply not true. At the earliest stages of pregnancy, certain embryonic cardiac activity can only be detected with a transvaginal ultrasound.”

On the Georgia Senate floor, she previously pointed out that most of her colleagues would not have had that experience.

Jordan is a partner with Shamp Jordan Woodward in Atlanta. She has represented individuals in actions against predatory lending practices. Recently she defeated an insurance company that had denied coverage for breast cancer treatments. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law. She clerked for Judge Anthony Alaimo of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.