Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership.

I rise in opposition to H.R. 36. It endangers women's health. It contains a woefully inadequate rape exception, is patently unconstitutional, and it contains no health exception for the mother.

The entire premise that women must provide ``proof of rape'' is preposterous and hurtful to women who have already faced incredible trauma. Most of us cannot begin to fathom what a woman has faced in these situations. The FBI rates rape the second worst crime, preceded only by murder, in terms of the destruction and continuing harm to the victim.

This is truly adding insult to injury. The majority party expects survivors to be mindful of keeping good medical paper records and to file paperwork that they, the majority, have decided that the rape victim should file. The reality is that abortions after 20 weeks are rare and represent just 1.5 percent of pregnancies that are terminated.

In almost all of these cases, the women choosing an abortion are doing so because there is a grave problem with their pregnancy and their own health that affects their fetus. Some fetuses are incompatible with life, and in some cases, going to full term would destroy a woman's ability to have future children.

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Even after four decades of settled law, some of my colleagues still refuse to cede women their constitutional right and the autonomy and human dignity that goes with being allowed to make your own decisions about your own body and your own health care.

The party of individual rights and states' rights wants to go into medical, personal decisions of women in this country with their doctors.

I urge my colleagues to reject this awful bill, H.R. 36, and recognize that women are both capable and prepared to make decisions about their own bodies and their own medical care.

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