Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to House Amendment to S. National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of Providing for Consideration of S. Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act; and Waiving A Requirement of Clause 6(A) of Rule Xiii with Respect to Consideration of Certain Resolutions Reported From the Committee on Rules

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, if laws already enacted in the religious liberty protections enshrined in our Constitution were actually being protected, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be needing to vote on the Conscience Protection Act in the House of Representatives today.

Is it an attempt to prevent something? Yes. It is an attempt to protect all Americans' rights under our First Amendment. It is just that simple. Unfortunately, the right to exercise one's own conscience is under attack in the United States at the Federal and State level.

Let's be very clear on this. Conscience, as defined, is the ``inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one towards right action.'' It is the feeling that one has done something morally right or wrong. You cannot deny people rights that were enshrined in our Constitution and in our Bill of Rights just because it doesn't happen to fit a popular narrative right now.

If we cannot come together as the people's House and protect what we have been given by our forefathers and has been enshrined in our Bill of Rights and try to make it into something different, then we have totally missed the mark, and America should be greatly disappointed in whom they have sent to represent them.

None of us can turn our back on the Constitution. None of us can say that somehow this is something different than what it is. It is the protection of one's freedoms and liberties under our Bill of Rights and in our First Amendment. It is that simple.

Conscience--conscience--why should somebody have to sacrifice their religious conscience because somebody says let's redefine it into something else? It is nothing more than doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and I am talking about religious conscience.

Why would we limit our schools and our hospitals of religious founding? Why would we say to them, no, you don't have the right to do this; we are going to supersede that?

It is protection for the rights of the First Amendment. That is something we all took an oath to do, and that is what we need to do.

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