Providing for Consideration of H.R. 358, Protect Life Act

Floor Speech

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, this bill seeks to undo women's constitutional rights under the guise of being about government funding for abortion. The law, unfortunately, already forbids Federal funds from paying for abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or where the woman's life is in danger. This bill goes well beyond that. It would make it virtually impossible for any of the health plans offered through the health exchanges set up as part of the Affordable Care Act to cover abortions.

As the authors plainly intend, it would make it virtually impossible for most women to buy insurance coverage for abortions with their own money. The bill would also allow a doctor or hospital to refuse to provide an abortion to a woman whose life is in imminent peril. They could let that woman die right there in the emergency room, and the government would be powerless to do anything.

Madam Speaker, I remember a time not that long ago when women had no options for legal abortions and had to resort to illegal back alley abortionists. Women were butchered, many died, others became sterile, all because the medical care they desperately sought and the compassion they desperately needed was denied to them. No woman should be treated with this contempt.

The real purpose of this bill--which denies women the right to purchase insurance coverage for legal abortions, even with their own money--is to make it impossible for women to exercise their constitutional right to choose for themselves.

This bill is an abomination. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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