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Ms. MOORE. Madam Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill,
and it will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If this
amendment is adopted, the bill, as amended, will immediately proceed to
final passage.
As the Clerk has indicated, Madam Speaker, this motion to recommit
would merely protect the medical privacy of millions of women,
including those women who are victims of rape and incest. It would
ensure that nothing in H.R. 7, the underlying legislation, could be
construed to allow any entity to violate the medical privacy of any
woman, including these victims, when it comes to her choice of
comprehensive health care services.
Madam Speaker, we have heard a great debate here today, and we have
heard, Madam Speaker, the majority party insist that we need to codify
the 1976 Hyde amendment prohibiting poor women from having abortions.
I can assure you that, as we have looked over the past 42 years here
on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we have seen that low-income women--
particularly women of color--have been disproportionately impacted by
the very successful implementation of the Hyde amendment. Women have
been forced to choose between food and shelter. They have been forced
to choose between the best interests of their health, and they have
given birth, on many occasions, even despite their poor health status,
their poor economic status, or their poor emotional status to children
who are poor.
We have heard data and statistics about the number of unborn persons
as a result of abortion. We have not heard one single statistic about
the number of children who are born in dire poverty only, Madam
Speaker, to be humiliated in this Chamber over and over again, being
called ``products of the culture of dependency,'' who are killed by
cuts, death by 1,000 cuts--cuts to food stamps, cuts to WIC, cuts to
Head Start, cuts to educational opportunity. Death by 1,000 cuts. We
have not heard anyone on the other side speak about that misalignment.
But with this legislation, it is not enough to stop low-income women,
poor women, particularly women of color--African Americans, Asians,
Native American women, Latinas--it is not enough to prevent them from
abortions. Some of them have become pregnant because of rape and incest
and forced trafficking who have diabetes and other underlying health
problems. That is not enough.
This legislation is so nefarious as to try to prevent the women who
have been lucky enough to get a job in a small business, lucky enough
to be able to afford to buy insurance and use their own money to buy
insurance--they have been lucky enough to do that--to prevent them, by
some extraneous nexus--supposedly health care-funded payments through
the Affordable Care Act--from seeking this health care. This is really,
really a backdoor approach to really trying to undermine the law of the
land, Roe v. Wade.
Many women, Madam Speaker, know on a personal level the history of
shame and stigma that come forward when they are trying to seek the
best remedy for their life at that time, for whatever reason that they
need to have an abortion.
I know personally, Madam Speaker, of young women who have been 13
years old and who have become victims of statutory rape, and the best
solution for their lives at that time and for their health is an
abortion because their life is truly in danger. This is the kind of
bill that would prevent them from having that opportunity.
Madam Speaker, I hope that you will accept this motion to recommit,
and I yield back the balance of my time.
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