Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. DEUTCH. Madam Chair, I do not believe that the government should interfere with the reproductive rights of a woman, but that is not what is being debated here.

No matter how many times our friends on the other side of the aisle say that this is an amendment meant to prevent Federal dollars from going to fund abortions, it will not make it true; it will not make it so. That's not what this is about. We have heard all of the statistics. We know what this is about.

I would like to spend a moment talking about how this whole debate is viewed around the country. I would like to spend a minute talking about what the country ought to look like for my daughters and for my son.

In this amendment, we can envision a Nation where there might be a place for sex education to be taught in a scientific and comprehensive way, which might actually reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, which might actually reduce teen pregnancies, and which will keep our American children and young women healthy.

We might actually envision a country where we have testing for sexually transmitted diseases and where, if caught, we can help make the Nation healthier.

Madam Chair, we also have an opportunity here tonight to think about a Nation where women have the opportunity to seek the health care they need and deserve--poor women oftentimes who might have no place else to go but who can have an opportunity to get the health care they need and to get the cancer screenings they need, screenings that can save their lives.

We can envision all of these things in this amendment.

Ladies and gentlemen, we know what Planned Parenthood provides in these clinics: 95 percent of what they provide is health care that does exactly what we want done in this country; 95 percent of what Planned Parenthood does helps keep Americans healthy. It helps take care of women, and it helps make sure that they are better mothers. It helps make sure that their families can be taken care of, and it helps identify cancer before it's too late so that kids can grow up with their mothers.

We understand what this amendment is about. This is not an amendment about abortion. This is an amendment about clamping down on a clinic that provides medical services whose politics those on the other side simply do not agree with. This is about the opportunity to move forward with something that can provide those health care services: with clinics that can help save lives.

We can do all of that right here in this House.

Members, I ask, as we go forward today, that we think about the opportunity we have here to cast a vote that supports women, to cast a vote that supports families, and to take what will be the most pro-family vote we will have an opportunity to cast in this CR debate: that is a vote against this amendment.

I urge my colleagues to do so.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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