Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4719, Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question in order to bring the Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act to the floor.

In 1993, I was a leader in passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA. If you had told me then that RFRA would one day be used to allow employers to dictate to employees what preventive health care they can or cannot use, if you had told me then that I would stand on the House floor in 2014 fighting to ensure that women have the ability to make their own most basic health care decisions regardless of their boss' religious beliefs, I would never have believed it.

We wrote that bill to be a shield to protect an individual's personal exercise of religious beliefs, not a sword to enable employers to impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

No matter how sincerely held a religious belief might be, for-profit employers, like Hobby Lobby or Conestoga Wood, must not be allowed to impose their beliefs or that belief on their employees as a means of denying their employees access to critical preventive health care services.

I was proud to work with the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette) and the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) to introduce this simple legislation to ensure that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's mangling of RFRA, employers cannot deny their employees access to federally mandated health services.

Every woman must have the right to follow her own beliefs and guidance when making health care choices. This bill simply guarantees that the boss' beliefs cannot supersede that right.

I was disappointed to see that none of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted earlier this week to bring this bill to the floor. I urge them to stand with us today or else, when they go home this weekend, to tell the men and women of their districts that their health care decisions are now going to be made for them by their bosses, regardless of their own choices, regardless of their own religious beliefs or the doctor's recommendations; and tell them that you believe that their boss' religious beliefs must be imposed on them, notwithstanding their own religious beliefs, which don't count; and tell them you did nothing to stop this.

This country will not stand for that. We have fought for too long to preserve the right of all Americans to make their own health care choices and, I must add, to make their own religious decisions to refuse to act now.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, allow this bill to come to the floor, and send a strong message that health care choices are not your boss' business and that your religious beliefs trump your boss' religious beliefs.

Your boss has a right to his beliefs. You have a right to your beliefs. Government must not allow him to impose his beliefs on you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source