Breast Cancer Awareness Commemorative Coin Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in favor of H.R. 2722, introduced by my distinguished colleague on the Financial Services Committee, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, the ranking member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
I commend the gentlewoman for introducing the bill before us today, the Breast Cancer Awareness Commemorative Coin Act, which provides a chance for all of us to come together to raise awareness about this critical health issue that impacts the lives of so many women and families.
Mr. Speaker, the statistics are startling. Approximately one in eight women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer during her lifetime; and many of these women, approximately 1 in 36, will lose their lives from this horrible disease.
This means that every 13 minutes, a woman in this country will die from breast cancer. That is 40,290 women in the United States are expected to die from breast cancer in 2015 alone.
While this disease affects women in every community across this country for a variety of reasons, such as the lack of adequate care, the likelihood of dying from the disease is particularly high for African American women. In fact, African American women had a 44 percent higher rate of breast cancer mortality than White women. That is why the conversation we are having here today is so important.
With increased awareness, early detection, new research, and better medicine, we can save lives, thousands of them each year. If consideration of the bill before us today causes at least one woman to get screened for breast cancer, we will be better off for it.
I urge my colleagues to support the bill before us today, which will help raise awareness and modest sums for the fight against breast cancer.
Again, I urge adoption of the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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