Correcting the Enrollment Of H.R. 1473

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. I yield myself 2 minutes.

I rise in opposition to this concurrent resolution. It has nothing to do with the budget and everything to do with ideology.

This is an attempt to turn back the clock on women's health and basic rights. The majority wants to impose their traditional view of a woman's role and take us back to a day when family planning was not available. With this resolution, the majority aims to exclude one specific health care provider, Planned Parenthood, from all Federal resources. This will needlessly put lives in danger.

Planned Parenthood carries out millions of lifesaving preventative and primary care services every year. They deliver immunizations, routine gynecological exams, nearly 1 million screenings for cervical cancer, 830,000 breast exams, and nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections like HIV every single year. If this resolution passes, all of these services would be lost.

Seventy-five percent of their more than 3 million patients live at or below 150 percent of the poverty level, make less than $33,000 for a family of four. One of every five women in America has gone to Planned Parenthood for access to health care. Sixty percent of these women consider Planned Parenthood their main source of care. And, in fact, even the number of men Planned Parenthood serves has doubled over the past decade. All of these women and men would lose access to these services if this should pass.

This resolution guts a primary source of care for millions of American families. We all know this has nothing to do with Federal funding of abortion. Federal funds are already banned from going towards abortion services under the Hyde amendment.

We should not be playing political games with women's lives. I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous resolution and to stand for women's health and, above all, to trust women to make the right decisions.

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Ms. DeLAURO. My Republican colleagues were prepared to shut down the Federal Government over women's health. If you can imagine that. Turn this country into chaos because of women's health issues. Today they continue to treat women as second-class citizens. They would treat women with a lack of respect, denigrate them, and undervalue women in our society today. That is what this debate is all about.

They would deny women basic health care. And because we in this House of Representatives have health care, they don't care much about what's happening to those whose primary care is at this facility, for cancer screenings. I am a survivor of ovarian cancer. I know what it means to be screened, to be diagnosed, and to be told I have a serious illness, and that I have the opportunity to get well. Trust the women of this Nation. Trust them. Vote against this misguided resolution.

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