Pregnant Students' Rights Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. RANDALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Scott for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 6359, a bill that claims to protect pregnant students but actually mandates that they get less, not more information about their rights.

If the sponsor of this bill and the majority party actually believed in supporting student parents, then they would take real action, not just grandstand on the House floor because the March for Life is this weekend.

The bill before us today requires the dissemination of incomplete information, but it also comes after House Republicans have worked alongside the Trump regime to dismantle and weaken the Department of Education and protections for students who file complaints around Title IX violations, among other things.

It has dismantled subsidized loan programs and financial aid. It has decimated Medicaid, the number one payer for births in this country, in order to pay for tax breaks for the ultrawealthy and fund ICE's violent reign in our communities.

If we believed in supporting student parents, we would put more money into childcare subsidies, more money into financial aid, and more money into food assistance so that the women in college, the people who are students who get pregnant, who have a tough decision to make, would have all of the resources and support they need to make the decision that is right for them.

It is not our job to tell a student what decision is right for them. It is not our job to tell any high school graduate that they need to go to college, right? I hear Republicans say that all the time. I tend to agree. I believe that students deserve all of the options and all of the support to make the choice that is right for them.

Yet mandating incomplete information while gutting the programs that would allow a pregnant student to choose to stay pregnant and to choose to complete school is a fallacy. It is political theater, and it is doing a disservice to the students who we are purporting to support.

I have had a chance to work with a lot of students who have become pregnant, both from around the time I was in junior high, when a friend of mine had a pregnancy scare, to a time when I was in college, to being a volunteer in the bay area where I was on a rapid response line in case someone needed to take a bus 3\1/2\ hours from their college campus into the city. That is because that was the only place they could access either maternity care, OB/GYN care, or access abortion care. We have not funded healthcare in rural communities across the country. We have gutted programs that provide actual support for pregnant people.

This is a joke. This let's make sure they get an email with all of the information. It is unserious.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill and to take serious action to support students, pregnant or not.

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