Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. FRANKEL. Mr. Chair, I oppose this very cruel amendment which supports the Trump administration's rule that allows virtually any individual or entity involved in a patient's care, from a hospital's board of directors to a receptionist that schedules procedures, to put personal beliefs ahead of a patient's health.

This antiabortion obsession has gone to the ridiculousness.

Under this Trump rule, a pharmacist could refuse to fill a prescription for birth control, a receptionist could refuse to schedule an abortion for a child rape victim, an ambulance driver could refuse to take a patient suffering from miscarriage to the hospital, all based upon their personal beliefs, not the patient's welfare.

Mr. Chair, this rule is dangerous. The amendment is dangerous. It should be killed before it kills us.

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Ms. FRANKEL. Mr. Chair, my, my, my, here we go again, the anti- abortion obsession turned into more cruel ridiculousness.

How interesting that my Republican colleagues, whose motto is ``less government,'' try at every opportunity to interfere with a woman's most personal decision whether or not to bring a child into the world.

But this amendment does more than that. It is aimed at eviscerating Planned Parenthood and like clinics, cutting off access to contraception and lifesaving healthcare to millions of Americans.

Women and the people they trust--not politicians--must be in charge of women's reproductive destinies, which means that women must have access to full healthcare, because we will not go back to the days of coat hanger medicine.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to defeat this very, very bad, bad, bad, bad, very bad amendment.

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