Addressing Needs of Working Families

Floor Speech

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Mrs. TRAHAN. Mr. Speaker, we are more than 3 weeks into January, yet Republican leadership in this Chamber has failed to call a vote on a single piece of legislation to address the pressing needs of hardworking families. There has been nothing to ease the burden of grocery prices, nothing to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and nothing to make it easier for an American to buy a home.

Instead, what is the priority for the Republicans this week? A vote on H.R. 21, the so-called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that will give politicians here in Washington the power to monitor women's pregnancies and criminalize doctors and nurses who provide lifesaving care to women in need. I wish I was kidding.

Over the next couple of days, we are going to hear Republicans get up here and use scare tactic after scare tactic in attempting to justify this vote, so let's set the record straight about what this legislation does.

At first glance, its stated goal might sound reasonable: ``to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.''

That sounds logical on paper, but here is the reality: This situation almost never happens. When Texas passed a law requiring reporting on abortions resulting in live births, they reported zero live births over 3 years--zero. The same was true in Oklahoma.

What is this bill actually targeting? As we dig into H.R. 21, it becomes clear that this legislation purposely distorts what abortion care really is. It sweeps up highly complex and deeply personal medical situations, including those where a mother learns that her life is in danger because her baby has a fatal abnormality and cannot survive outside the womb.

Imagine the agony of that mother, a woman who dreamed of holding her child, now forced to make the unthinkable decision to induce labor to save her own life.

As her baby is born in agonizing pain with just minutes or hours to live, because no amount of medical intervention can save them, this bill seeks to make that horrifying situation even worse by overruling any decision by the mother and her doctor to provide compassionate, appropriate medical care.

Instead, it threatens doctors and nurses with jail time, even if the only alternative is prolonging the pain, suffering, and, tragically, the inevitable death of the baby.

Tell me, Mr. Speaker, how does that make sense? Why do Republican Members of Congress insist they know what is better for a mother and her baby than she and her doctor do?

This bill is not about protecting life. It is about pushing out blatant lies about women's healthcare, and it is about control. It is about extreme Republican politicians inserting themselves into the most personal, private, and heartbreaking decisions a family has to make.

The cost is that women's lives are put at risk because some here would rather legislate ideology than acknowledge the complexity of real-life medical decisions.

To my colleagues across the aisle, instead of advancing a dangerous, divisive bill that exploits women's health for political gain, let's focus on what Americans are actually asking us to do. Let's work to lower costs. Let's expand access to healthcare. Let's give families the tools they need to thrive. The American people sent us here to do that work together.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the GOP's reproductive healthcare surveillance act.

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