Women's Public Health and Safety Act

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the new fiscal year starts in less than 36 hours, and Congress has still not passed the annual appropriations bills. If we don't do it, the government will shut down. During the last shutdown, we lost $24 billion and 120,000 private sector jobs. I am sure we could expect just the same now.

The debt ceiling will need to be raised within the next couple months, Madam Speaker, and many Republicans are already threatening to refuse to perform even that basic task. This would throw the international economy into chaos. It would cause the loss of tens of thousands more jobs in the United States.

Of course, the Ex-Im Bank expired in June, and our business communities are clamoring for reauthorization. Why? Well, last year the Ex-Im Bank financed deals that supported 164,000 American jobs.

I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that the U.S. House should spend this week figuring out how to avoid a political and financial catastrophe rather than once again passing a blatantly political bill stripping women of their basic healthcare rights. This latest attack targets both the women who need to see a doctor or healthcare provider as well as the providers themselves.

I wonder if the people on the other side of the aisle actually read this bill on the floor today because it is so broadly written that it would target any medical provider--doctor, hospital, clinic, you name it--that has even the most tenuous connection to the provision of a full range of women's healthcare services.

The majority claims that this bill targets Planned Parenthood, a healthcare provider that 2.7 million Americans rely on every year. First of all, over 90 percent of the services provided by that agency are routine wellness exams, like breast exams, cervical cancer screening, and birth control and family planning services.

As we all know, because we discussed it ad nauseam last week, Planned Parenthood has received no Federal funding for abortions. In fact, no agency receives Federal funding for abortions with a very few exceptions.

This bill would, therefore, not stop any government funding of abortions. It would instead allow Federal and State funding to be cut off for any entity, not just Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions with private dollars.

That means that poor women would be blocked from the full range of healthcare services that they need not just at Planned Parenthood, but at their local hospital or their local clinic or the offices of another women's health group.

Let's call this bill what it is. It is an attempt to eliminate healthcare services for women across the board, using the Planned Parenthood witch hunt as an excuse. Let's be very clear. The investigation of the last few months has demonstrated that the videotapes the majority so heavily relies on are heavily edited, manipulated, and at times downright misleading.

We are the U.S. Congress, Madam Speaker, and we are better than that. The American public will not stand for this diversion, and neither should we. Let's defeat this ill-conceived bill. Let's direct all of our collective attention to bipartisan solutions resolving the looming fiscal disaster that we are all facing.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. DUFFY. Madam Speaker, I have to tell you, I have been watching my Democrat friends across the aisle do somersaults trying to whitewash their past and rename their dinners that they have every year, their Jefferson-Jackson dinner. There is a big conversation about the Confederate flag and what it means, which I would agree with my friends across the aisle. But what they don't want to talk about is the roots of where Planned Parenthood started.

It started with Margaret Sanger, a known racist and a speaker in front of the KKK. She believed in eugenics, and she is the founder of Planned Parenthood. We should talk about the racist roots of Planned Parenthood just like with the Confederate flag and just like the Jefferson-Jackson dinner that the Democrats celebrate every year.

If you watch the videos that have come out about Planned Parenthood harvesting little baby body parts and selling those body parts for a profit, it is disgusting. This is not a debate about abortion or even non-abortion, pro-life or pro-abortion. Those who are even pro-abortion agree that these tactics are unacceptable. They have no place in our society. That Federal tax dollars should actually go to fund an institution that harvests baby body parts for sale is absolutely asinine.

You want to talk about health care? Health care doesn't mean Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood doesn't mean women's health care.

You talk about defunding women's health care. There is no less money. There is the same amount of money that goes to women's health care. That is a false argument. We spend the same amount of money, but we say: You know what? When we have an organization that supports the harvest and sale of body parts, our tax dollars probably shouldn't go to it.

Or, better yet, why don't we let the States make that decision for themselves? If they say that it is an affront to our morals and our values in one State, we should say we are not going to send Federal Medicaid money to that organization. And if another State says, ``You know what? We are okay with it,'' then let them spend their money that way, giving States back the power to choose how they use their money.

I have got to tell you that I oftentimes sit back and am amazed that my friends across the aisle who talk about being very compassionate and caring and loving and supporting the downtrodden can't join us in saying: We probably should at least ban abortions after 20 weeks when little babies feel pain, when little babies can survive outside the womb. We are so radical in our position that we want to support abortion up to the point of birth. We won't even support you if there is a botched abortion and the baby is born alive and we should probably try to save it.

You can't even join us in that. It is a sellout to the radical abortion industry.

I see the rally outside. It is a rally for Planned Parenthood, which provides the largest funds to the Democratic coffers, to their campaigns.

This is not about life. This not about health care. This is not about abortion. This is about campaign money that flows from Planned Parenthood into my friends' campaigns. Sadly, I wish they would put aside their campaign concerns instead of standing for states' rights and women's health and little babies' lives.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair reminds all Members to address their remarks to the Chair.

Ms. DeGETTE. Madam Speaker, I didn't agree with much the previous speaker said, but I do agree that, from our perspective, it is about campaign money on that side.

I yield 1 1/2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

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Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to point out that the gentleman is absolutely correct. Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms. They do provide breast cancer screenings.

But under this bill, if there is a hospital or a clinic that does provide mammograms and they also provide abortions, well, then, the States could prevent funding.

So, ironically, under the terms of this bill up for discussion today, mammograms could be prevented. I don't think that is the intention of the rider of this bill.

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Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We have heard a lot of emotion today, Madam Speaker, and a lot of ideas and ugly things being thrown around, but as a lawyer with legal training, I did something radical. I actually read this bill. It didn't take me very long, because, as Mr. Farr pointed out, it is only two pages long.

I want to talk about what this bill would really do because this bill would do far, far more than its proponents claim that it would do.

Let me say, first of all, there is no Federal money that is spent on abortion in most cases in the United States. This has been the law of the land for a long time. I disagree with that law because I think it limits full reproductive health for women who can least afford it, but that is the law of the land.

So what are we talking about here? What we are talking about is States being able to deny money to anybody who is directly or indirectly involved with abortion services with nongovernmental money, with private money from women and their family, with insurance money, with nongovernmental money.

So here is how this bill would work. A State could decide that, if a hospital provided abortions with nongovernment money, it simply wasn't going to authorize State money or Medicaid money to that hospital. I don't mean just Medicaid money for women's services; I mean all Medicaid money or State money, all money for services.

This bill could say that an OB-GYN who has co-privileges at a hospital that provides abortion could now not serve any--any--Medicaid patients. This bill would say that a doctor who provides services at a neighborhood healthcare clinic who has privileges at a hospital that provides abortion could now be banned from taking Medicaid patients. That is how broad this bill is written.

Madam Speaker, what this would do is it would allow States to terminate all government funds to any entity that directly or indirectly provides abortions with nongovernment dollars.

So what would this do? Well, 72 million people in this country are on Medicaid right now. These people are men, these people are women, and these people are children. These people are people who take women's medical services and those who don't need them. These 72 million Americans risk the loss of all of their healthcare services under Medicaid because of this radical bill.

Now, okay, let's say that won't really happen. Let's say that is just an overbroad interpretation of the bill. So then our colleagues on the other side say, well, let's just limit ourselves to community health centers. If we use this bill to deny funding for Planned Parenthood, everyone will go to community health centers. Let's see how that would work.

Right now, we have 24 million patients in this country in community health centers. The community health centers themselves tell us, for every one of those 24 million patients they are taking, right now they are turning away seven people. So we have 4.2 million Planned Parenthood patients. Let's say those 4.2 Planned Parenthood patients decide to go to the community health clinics. That is not going to work.

They tried this in Louisiana. In Louisiana, a Federal judge found there would be 29 providers for 5,000 women to get healthcare services. That is untenable, that is unacceptable, and it puts our Nation's women's health at risk.

Listen, since we have been debating this bill today, we are 1 hour closer to a government shutdown, and we have done nothing to make sure we are not going to do that. I would suggest that we refocus our efforts, that we stop beating up Planned Parenthood, that we stop beating up women's health, that we get together collectively and we say: How are we going to keep this government open? How are we going to work together to make sure every man and woman in this country has a good job, good health insurance, and that they can provide for their families? That is what we are elected to do, and that is what I commit myself to do on behalf of this body.

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