Providing for Consideration of H.R. Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year Relating to Consideration of House Report and Accompanying Resolution; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FLETCHER. Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Scanlon for her work on the Rules Committee, for her focus on this issue this morning, and in response as to what we would do with the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I have just returned to Washington from my home State of Texas where I am sorry to report that the healthcare crisis we have been experiencing has only gotten worse. Pregnant women in crisis, having miscarriages, having complications that put their health and their lives at risk, are being turned away from hospital emergency rooms because the extreme laws that our State legislators have passed, banning abortion of just about any kind.

Doctors and hospitals have asked for clear guidance about when and how they can take care of these patients, these American citizens who are suffering in Texas and States like it that have passed similar, vague, extreme laws criminalizing doctors, women, and pregnancy itself.

Pregnant women have limited to no access to care and even to information. This puts their lives and health at risk, including their ability to have children in the future.

Pregnant women have shown up at emergency rooms only to be told to come back later when they are closer to death. Closer to death is the standard in Texas. Let's think about that.

We have cities and towns passing ordinances saying that women cannot drive through those cities if they are headed to New Mexico or to other places where they can get abortion care, if perhaps that is their purpose in traveling through.

Despite requests for clear guidance about what the Texas law means, neither the State of Texas nor the Texas Supreme Court will provide it, leaving women and doctors to risk jail time and more to get the healthcare that they need.

More than 50 years ago, a similar patchwork of restrictions in different States led women and doctors' groups to petition the courts to guarantee the right of Americans to make their own fully informed decisions about whether, when, and how to be pregnant.

They challenged the Texas law in a case brought by two young Texas women that went all the way up to the Supreme Court, a case we know as Roe v. Wade, which set out a framework to protect the health, privacy, and dignity of women in America.

Madam Speaker, 2 years ago this month, the Supreme Court reversed that 50-year precedent. The chaos that has followed will continue until this Congress acts, and we must. We must pass the Women's Health Protection Act, a bill to restore the framework that Americans have relied on for the last 50 years, providing a Federal statutory right to reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions.

That is why I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that we can bring up the Women's Health Protection Act today. We passed it in the last Congress twice. We have to pass it again and get it to President Biden's desk so that we can protect the health, privacy, dignity, and freedom of American women.

Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy), my friend.

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