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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is another time for me to be back on this floor again to talk about an issue I have talked about before, but it is a little bit different this time.

I have brought to this floor several times and have asked for unanimous consent for a very, very simple bill called the Conscience Protection Act. The Conscience Protection Act is a bill that would protect religious liberty and freedom and conscience benefits for healthcare workers across the country. It is really not that controversial. In fact, let me show you how noncontroversial this really is.

When the church amendments, years ago--decades ago, even--were put in by Congress to be able to protect the conscience rights of individuals and entities that object to performing or assisting an abortion or a sterilization in violation of their religious belief and conscience, that passed this body 92 to 1. So 92 to 1, this body voted and said: Of course, we want to protect the rights of individuals and not have to be compelled to perform an abortion if it is against their moral faith. That seems normal. In a normal conversation everywhere else, that would be straightforward and simple--until now.

Here is what is happening now: A nurse who had told her employer that she did not want to perform an abortion, that she had a moral objection to that, worked in this hospital. One day, the hospital was running short on staff, and so they called her in, didn't tell her what the procedure was, and when she walks into the surgery area, the doctor looks at her and says: Don't hate me--meaning, we know full well what your belief is--but we are short-staffed, and we need another nurse; you are going to do this. The hospital informed her: You will lose your job if you don't do this right now, when everyone knew what her moral conviction was.

Now, the way that the law is set up, it is set up to say, for that person who had an entity deliberately violate her moral conscience, then the government steps in and presses against the employer and says: You can't do that. That is the way it is supposed to work. In fact, that is the way it was working until Xavier Becerra came in to HHS, looked at the case, and dropped it and said: You get no recourse-- because the administration is pro-abortion. It doesn't matter what your belief is; it is what the administration's belief is.

So the response to that is pretty straightforward: Allow an individual who has been harmed to have what is called a private right of action; that they don't have to wait for government to intervene on their behalf to have a private right of action so that an individual, if government doesn't intervene on their behalf, they can intervene.

I have brought that to this floor several times, and I have been told: That is controversial. That is divisive. Then this week, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act on the White House lawn with a special feature in it called a private right of action. So if individuals who felt--and the language says--that they were harmed because of the disagreement of others on their same-sex marriage, they didn't have to wait on government to be able to intervene on their behalf; they could do it.

I was told this was belt-and-suspenders. I was told, of course, the government is going to step in on their behalf; but in case they don't, they need a private right of action so that they can stand up for their own beliefs.

It is fascinating to me that what I have asked for for people of conscience who don't want to perform abortions but are compelled to do so by their employer, that was a radical concept, that we couldn't have a private right of action for them, but it was required in the Respect for Marriage Act. In fact, I brought an amendment to take that out to say: This is going to lead to a lot of lawsuits. And my colleagues said: Oh, no. Oh, no. And voted against that.

So now I am going to ask a very simple question: Is this body going to give a private right of action to some people they philosophically believe in, but other people they philosophically don't believe in don't get that same right? Are we going to discriminate today against people of faith and say: You do not get this right; other people do? That is my simple question for today.

This is not a radical request. This is a real-life issue that is occurring right now, where this administration will not intervene on behalf of individuals who have a religious, longstanding moral objection to being compelled to perform an abortion.

Let's give them their private right of action so that employers don't feel like this administration can look the other way and they can do whatever they want to their employees or fire them, regardless of what their religious beliefs are.

This used to not be a radical concept. It was 92 to 1. This is not intended to be a radical concept today. It is a simple statement: Is this body going to discriminate against people of faith today? That is my question.

401, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. LANKFORD. Apparently, a woman has a right to control her own body unless her boss compels her to perform an abortion, and then she no longer has control over her own body--her boss does. And he can tell her: Perform this abortion against your faith, or I will fire you--and that is OK.

So choice seems to only go one way. If you choose to perform abortions, you are accepted in our culture. If you believe a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and unique DNA and a functioning nervous system is actually a child, then you are an outlier, and your opinion doesn't count. The only thing that counts is you are compelled to take the life of more children and stand there and watch it. I think that is wrong.

No, this bill doesn't get into--as Senator Murphy said, it doesn't get into speaking out about the violence against abortion clinics or, quite frankly, get into the violence on pregnancy resource centers that have been firebombed by pro-abortion folks, who have been spray- painted, who have threatened and attacked people who want to give sonograms to individuals who are pregnant. It doesn't deal with any of those because, quite frankly, that is a different committee. That is over in the Judiciary Committee.

This is a very narrow bill dealing with one simple topic. It doesn't deal with everything on abortion. It doesn't decrease abortions in America. It doesn't do anything like that. It is simple and straightforward. It says: Is this government going to compel people to violate their faith? Apparently, the answer today is yes from this body; we don't care what you believe. I think that is sad, and I think that shows how far we have moved as a nation when it used to be 92 to 1 that we would say: If you have a different opinion, that is OK in America. But now you can't have a different opinion. That is not right.

I would hope this body would speak out and say at some point that we respect all opinions in America and would speak out for the right of conscience for people of faith.

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