Women's Health Care
Floor Speech
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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I have said it time and time again all across New York State at event after event: We need more women's voices in our decisionmaking process. We need more women at the table in government and in business. When women are at the table, they bring a very different perspective to the same problems, a different set of solutions, a different approach. At the end of the day, the outcomes are better when women's voices are heard.
But just when I thought I couldn't be any more dumbfounded by the debate around here in terms of denying access to women's health services, there was a hearing yesterday in the House of Representatives on the topic of contraception and all the witnesses were male. My colleague, Carolyn Maloney, had it quite right when she walked out on that farce.
Let me be clear, once again: 99 percent of all America's women have used contraception at some time in their lifetime. When will they get this simple, nondebatable fact that the power to decide whether a woman will use contraception lies with her, not her boss, not her employer. What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them? This has nothing to do with religious freedom, and you don't have to take it from me. Take it from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the majority decision of the 1990 case on Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia wrote:
We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.
It is time to end this ridiculous, ideological fight once and for all and get back to the real business at hand of growing our economy and getting Americans back to work.
But if our Republican colleagues want to continue to take this issue head on, we will stand here as often as is necessary and draw a line in the sand that the women of the Senate will continue to oppose these attacks on women's rights and women's health care.
I yield the floor for my colleague from California.
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