There are many reasons D.C.’s politicians and residents want budget autonomy from Congress. At a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) stood by Mayor Vince Gray and national organization leaders to make the case, in part from a women’s health perspective.

D.C.’s budget must be approved by Congress, which in the past has attached riders blocking local Medicaid funding for abortions. Norton, joined by Planned Parenthood’s executive vice president Dawn Laguens, called members of Congress who attached unwanted riders onto the city’s budget “schoolyard bullies.”

“Politicians don’t belong in a woman’s personal medical decisions as they don’t belong in D.C. spending decisions,” Laguens said, according to WJLA.

Norton and Laguens have good reason to fear the bullies. In what’s becoming an annual tradition, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) once again introduced a bill to ban abortions for Washington’s women after 20 weeks.

In a press release, Norton also cited two pieces of anti-choice legislation introduced by the 113th Congress:

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) reintroduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 7/S. 946), which would, among other things, make permanent law the annual rider that prohibits the District from spending its local funds on abortions for low-income women. This bill passed the House last Congress, but was not taken up in the Senate.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) reintroduced his bill, which has 32 cosponsors, to ban abortions after 20 weeks in the District of Columba, after filing an amendment to the Senate budget resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that Congress should pass such a bill. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) reintroduced his companion D.C. abortion ban bill, which was defeated on the House floor last Congress, but has since expanded it to a nationwide ban, which is a victory for home rule but not for reproductive choice.

“Although we still are fighting the rider that annually bars the city from using its local funds for abortions for low-income women, we have been able, with the help of our allies, to defeat even more serious incursions into our local affairs,” Norton said at yesterday’s press conference. “With extraordinary help from pro-choice organizations, neither the stand-alone bill to permanently bar the city from funding reproductive choice for low-income women, going well beyond the annual abortion rider, nor the stand-alone bill to bar abortions only in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks, in defiance of Roe v. Wade, have become law.”

She added, “The millions of Americans who agree with us on the issues of reproductive choice, gun safety, and HIV/AIDS prevention are well-represented here today. But, millions more who do not share our views on one or more of these issues nevertheless stand with us on the overriding principle of local control of local affairs and that local spending remains local.”

D.C. residents teenagers voted overwhelmingly for a budget autonomy referendum during the April special election. Congress has 35 days to overturn this vote, which it hasn’t done yet. But even if autonomy becomes law, it could be repealed, Norton said at the press conference.