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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. This resolution itself and the wording that it has in this resolution says it is the sense of the Senate that every person has the basic right to emergency healthcare, including abortion care.

Let me be very, very specific on this. We had a hearing today in the Finance Committee where this same subject was addressed. We had ob-gyns from both perspectives on this, those who perform abortions and those who have a moral objection to it. We had a very good argument to be able to lay some facts out to be able to walk through this, with two sets of attorneys there to be able to walk through the law.

Here is what became very clear during that conversation this morning in that open hearing. There is no State in America in which a woman faces persecution or prosecution for having an abortion. No State criminalizes miscarriage. No State criminalizes removing an ectopic pregnancy. No States prohibits lifesaving care for the mother. No State requires a woman to be actively dying in order for her doctor to care for her.

We heard story after story about doctors being concerned that they may face this because they are hearing political rhetoric--political rhetoric like Vice President Harris in a speech that she said recently--where she said women were being arrested and facing prosecution for experiencing miscarriages. That is not true.

So all of this rhetoric that is being put out there is making doctors afraid, but it was very clear from the conversation in law that none of those things are actually true. Every physician prior to the Dobbs decision--when there were limitations on abortion across the country and post-Dobbs decision, when every single State is making those decisions--allowed physicians in an ER to be able to make lifesaving decisions for the mother and the child. Every doctor has already the ability to be able to make that decision to be able to protect the life of the mother. They have the protections to be able to do that.

So this is a false claim that somehow what happened in the Dobbs decision and what is happening in the States is limiting that. It is actually the political rhetoric that is making people afraid.

What also came out during the hearing this morning was the very real risk of chemical abortions. We have recently had tragic situations where women used the chemical abortion pills that they are being told are as safe as Tylenol, and that it has life-threatening and in some cases, recently, life-taking consequences. Chemical abortion pills are not Tylenol, yet they are being sold as that.

And what we are seeing is more and more cases of the diminishing of ``this is no big deal to be able to end this pregnancy'' when they haven't seen a doctor because the Biden administration is now saying you don't have to see a physician. So the woman doesn't know if she has an ectopic pregnancy or not. If she takes the chemical abortion pill while she has an ectopic pregnancy, she is at risk. But the Biden administration is saying: You don't have to see a doctor. They can just mail it to you. It is just as safe as Tylenol when it is not.

We are also not being tested for their blood type to be able to make sure it doesn't affect future pregnancies during this chemical abortion. And they are not also determining by sonogram how far along the mom is in this process because there are limitations to this where it becomes more and more dangerous.

All those things are restrictions that used to be there, that the Biden administration has taken away to say: No, we want more people to have access to chemical abortions. But it is making it more dangerous for women. And we have seen this recently.

So we want to engage in a conversation about how can we actually put some of those basic humane doctor-requested restrictions in there to make sure we are protecting the lives of all those women. That is a better conversation for us to be able to have. To say: What is it the FDA actually said was appropriate in the past, and what can we do to be able to protect the lives of women?

But, yes, we should be able to continue to have this conversation because there is a real concern that more and more doctors are afraid to do basic healthcare in an ER because more and more people are laying rhetoric out there that they are going to be arrested, and that is not true.

There has not been a single physician in the country that has been arrested based on actually performing lifesaving care for mom in any ER room in the country.

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