Prohibiting Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Floor Speech
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Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor to ask my Republican colleagues a question: Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down and hit your head and think you woke up in the 1950s or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the U.S. Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women's health care centers.
On second thought, maybe I shouldn't be that surprised. The Republicans have had a plan for years to strip away women's rights to make choices about their own bodies. Just look at the recent facts. In 2013, Republicans threatened to shut down the government unless they could change the law to let employers deny women access to birth control. In March of this year, Republicans held up a noncontroversial, bipartisan bill to stop human trafficking. Why? Because they demanded new anti-abortion restrictions to cover private funding meant to help the victims of human trafficking. In June, House Republicans passed a budget eliminating funding for the Title X Family Planning Program, the only Federal grant program that provides birth control, HIV tests, STD screening, and other preventive services for poor and uninsured people.
Over the past few years, Republicans have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act more than 50 times, including the portions that require insurers to cover contraception. Let's be clear. It is not just Congress. Over the past 5 years Republican State legislators have passed nearly 300 new restrictions on abortion access. This year alone Republican State legislators have passed more than 50 new restrictions on women's access to legal health care.
Let's be really clear about something. The Republican scheme to defund Planned Parenthood is not some sort of surprised response to a highly edited video. Nope. The Republican vote to defund Planned Parenthood is just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated, rightwing attack on women's rights, and I am sick and tired of it. Women everywhere are sick and tired of it. The American people are sick and tired of it.
Scheduling this vote during the week of a big FOX News Presidential primary debate, days before candidates take trips to Iowa or New Hampshire, isn't just some clever gimmick. This is an all-out effort to build support to take away a woman's right to control her own body and access to medical care she may need.
This affects all of us, whatever your age, wherever you live. I guarantee that you know someone who has used Planned Parenthood health care centers. No one may mention it at Thanksgiving dinner or post it on Facebook for the whole world to know, but just look at the facts. One in five women in America is a Planned Parenthood patient at least once in her life. Every single year nearly 2.7 million women and men show up for help at Planned Parenthood.
Why do so many people use Planned Parenthood? Because they are nonprofit and they are open. More than half of Planned Parenthood centers are located in areas without ready access to health care. Women who can't get appointments anywhere else go to Planned Parenthood for pap tests and cancer screenings. Couples go to Planned Parenthood for STD treatments or pregnancy tests. Young people go to Planned Parenthood for birth control. And, yes, 3 percent of patients visit Planned Parenthood for a safe and legal abortion with a doctor who will show compassion and care for a woman who is making one of the most difficult decisions of her entire life.
To be clear, even though the abortions performed at Planned Parenthood are safe and legal, the Federal Government is not paying for any of them--not one dime. For almost 40 years the Federal Government has prohibited Federal funding for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest or life endangerment.
Most of the money Planned Parenthood receives from the government comes in the form of Medicaid payments for medical care provided to low-income patients, the same payments any other doctor or clinic receives for providing cancer screenings or other medical exams. The rest of Planned Parenthood's Federal funding comes from title X that provides birth control to low-income and uninsured people, the same program the House Republicans voted to cut in June.
The government doesn't fund abortions, period. A vote today to defund Planned Parenthood is not a vote to defund abortions. It is a vote to defund cancer screenings, birth control, and basic health care for millions of women.
I say to my Republican colleagues: The year is 2015, not 1955 and not 1895. Women have lived through a world where backward-looking ideologues tried to interfere with the basic health decisions made by a woman and her doctor, and we are not going back--not now, not ever.
The Republican plan to defund Planned Parenthood is a Republican plan to defund women's health care. For my daughter, for my granddaughters, for people all across Massachusetts, and all across this country, I stand with Planned Parenthood, and I hope my colleagues will do the same.
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