Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this motion to instruct. This motion seeks to strip language in the House bill that prohibits the Department of Defense from spending taxpayer money to facilitate abortion procedures.

DOD's abortion travel policy is a flagrant violation of Congress' intent and our Nation's moral principles.

This is all part of the Biden administration's politicization of the military.

For years, Biden's political appointees have been pushing questionable policies on our troops just to satisfy their ideological agenda. They understand that using military orders is the most efficient way to usher in the rapid social change that they seek.

The military should not be used as a petri dish for social experimentation. This is not the right thing to do. Our troops should not be used as the vanguard for the left's social agenda.

The civilian leadership at DOD should be focused on building the world's most lethal fighting force. Instead, they are doing somersaults to try to satisfy the far-left's political agenda.

This misguided abortion travel policy is just another example. It is a radical overreaction to a problem that doesn't exist.

Secretary Austin said that the policy was necessary to avoid significant implications for the readiness of the force, but in the 6 months since this began, there have been less than a handful of people who have exercised this policy.

Rather than helping readiness, radical policies like this one are undermining readiness. They are driving away potential recruits, and they are undermining morale and retention. It needs to end.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this motion, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I have one correction to make, that this is a new policy. This was not existing policy. It was announced on October 20 against the advice of the congressional leadership and finalized on February 16. They didn't just take existing policy and continue it.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I share the sentiment of the most recent speaker. I think it is shameful that the DOD has been playing games with the troops in this country.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct.

Let's be absolutely clear. Current Federal DOD law already permits taxpayer funding of abortion in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother, but the Biden DOD travel policy forces taxpayers to pay the transportation costs for military members and dependents to travel to procure an abortion for any reason whatsoever right up until the moment of birth.

Some States, like my State of New Jersey--and there are many others like it, like New York and California--have enacted extremist laws that legally sanction the killing of a baby for any reason whatsoever right up until the moment of birth. The Biden policy has no limits on gestational age, so it facilitates aborting babies through all 9 months.

There is nothing humane, Mr. Speaker, or benign about abortion. Abortion is not healthcare unless one construes the precious life of an unborn child analogous to a tumor to be excised or a disease to be vanquished.

Dr. Ronny Jackson's House-passed amendment to the NDAA overturns the DOD abortion travel policy.

Regrettably, the pro-abortion culture is truly a culture of denial. It continues to deny, devalue, and disrespect unborn children, both boys and girls.

We must recognize the breathtaking miracle of the newly created life of an unborn child and that women deserve better than abortion. We need to care for both. We need to love them both.

I do believe, Mr. Speaker, that future generations will someday look back on us and wonder how and why a society that bragged about its commitment to human rights could have legally sanctioned and aggressively promoted child beheadings, because they do behead the child during the process of a dismemberment abortion, as well as other dismemberment.

Abortion pills. How do they work? They literally starve the child to death. That is how they work. I work on global hunger and food insecurity issues in my district and throughout the country and world all the time. How does the abortion pill work? It starves the baby to death.

Please, Mr. Speaker, I call on my colleagues to not force taxpayers to facilitate abortion on demand.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama.
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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Van Duyne).

Ms. VAN DUYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion, although I will admit that it is very nice to hear my Democrat colleagues are finally concerned with military recruitment.

I wish they were worried about military recruitment when they were voting to kick out of the military members who didn't want to get the jab or when they were voting to support the botched Afghanistan withdrawal that led to so many unnecessary deaths.

They seem to have already changed the recruitment videos from ``Be All You Can Be'' to come and get an abortion. How proud they must be.

This is no more than a Federal power grab usurping State laws that were legally and constitutionally created by State legislators elected by a majority of voters from each State.

This is a Federal power grab by a party intent on forcing its radical political agenda down the throats of Americans, who overwhelmingly don't want it.

As President Biden and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know, the Hyde amendment, which President Biden supported for decades, explicitly prohibits Federal dollars from being used for taxpayer- funded abortions. Nearly 60 percent of Americans agree that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund abortions.
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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, this provision protects life and restores sanity to the Department of Defense.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose the motion, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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