Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this afternoon the Senate will be voting on a motion to proceed to a bill that would completely eliminate all Federal funding for Planned Parenthood. While I do not support this legislation, I have received assurances from the majority leader that should the motion to proceed succeed, there will be ample opportunity to offer amendments. Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to propose an alternative approach which Senator Kirk and I will offer as a substitute for the bill.

Throughout my service in the Senate, I have been a strong proponent of family planning and measures to promote and protect women's health. The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions in this country is to ensure that women have access to family planning services they need to protect against unintended pregnancies. That is why I have long supported title X family planning programs.

My support for family planning aside, however, I was sickened when I viewed the recently released videos featuring Planned Parenthood physicians in both their edited and unedited versions. The callousness with which Planned Parenthood employees discuss the sale of fetal tissue is appalling. It deserves our attention. The videos also raise valid questions about the ethics and legality of Planned Parenthood's practices in some of its clinics, albeit a minority of its clinics. As a result, I believe a full investigation is warranted to determine whether Planned Parenthood broke the law prohibiting the sale of fetal tissue.

Reviews by State medical boards are also warranted because it appears that some Planned Parenthood doctors may have been putting the procurement of fetal organs ahead of the well-being of their patients.

We do, however, need to keep in mind the fact that Planned Parenthood provides important family planning, cancer screening, and basic preventive health care to millions of women across this country. For many women, Planned Parenthood clinics provide the only health care services they receive. The title X Federal family planning funding that goes to Planned Parenthood already cannot be used for abortions, and the Federal Medicaid funding it receives can only be used for abortions in the case of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is at risk. In other words, the Hyde amendment--which has been on the books for so many years--applies fully to this Federal funding.

Some contend that other health care providers such as community health centers could somehow fill the gap in family planning and other women's health services if Federal funding were to be cut off to Planned Parenthood. In my State, the four Planned Parenthood clinics see almost 40 percent of the patients seeking title X family planning services, and they treat virtually all of the patients seeking those services in southern Maine. By way of contrast, the 20 community health sites in Maine that receive title X funding see just 17 percent of the patients seeking those services. If we were to defund Planned Parenthood, other family planning clinics in Maine, including community health centers, would see a 63-percent increase in their patient load. They would be forced to absorb 8,583 more patients if Federal funds to Planned Parenthood were eliminated. Moreover, these other family planning clinics are predominantly in central, western, and the northern parts of my State. None is in the area that is served by Planned Parenthood in southern Maine. I don't see how we can ensure that all of the patients currently served by Planned Parenthood can be absorbed by alternative health care providers.

The bill that has been proposed by several of my colleagues would require women to give up the health care provider of their choice, when we don't yet know all of the facts about Planned Parenthood's actions.

Therefore, I am joining my colleague from Illinois Senator Kirk in introducing legislation, which we intend to turn into an amendment if we proceed to this bill, that would require the Department of Justice to investigate whether Planned Parenthood or its affiliates have engaged in any illegal activity pertaining to fetal tissue and support a report to Congress on its findings within 90 days.

Activities involving fetal tissue have no relationship to Planned Parenthood's primary mission of promoting and protecting women's health. While Planned Parenthood claims that only a very small number of its affiliates engage in the sale of fetal organs and tissue, let's determine the facts. Those organizations that do engage in this reprehensible practice are the ones that have sparked this outrage and rightly so. I believe these are the organizations that should be the focus of our efforts. I know none of the Planned Parenthood clinics in my State engage in the practice of the procurement and sale of fetal tissue. I think we should keep in mind that we can come up with a more tailored and targeted approach that is aimed at those clinics that do engage in this practice.

Therefore, our legislation would defund any affiliate or subsidiary of Planned Parenthood Federation of America that received any compensation for engaging in these activities.

So the more targeted approach proposed by Senator Kirk and me accomplishes three important goals: First, it would not cause women served by Planned Parenthood clinics that do not engage in these reprehensible fetal tissue sales to lose their health care provider for basic services like family planning and cancer screening. After all, many of us have been critical of ObamaCare because it has forced families in this country to give up the doctor of their choice. Well, that is what this amendment would do. It would require women and other patients to find alternative health care providers, even if their Planned Parenthood clinic has done nothing wrong and is not engaged in the reprehensible sale of fetal tissue. How is that fair? How is that a targeted approach?

Second, our legislation would allow Congress to get the facts to determine if those few Planned Parenthood affiliates that do engage in fetal tissue procurement have broken Federal law and violated medical ethics. We need to know the answer to those questions, and we need to know how widespread this practice actually is.

Third, our legislation would defund those affiliates, subsidiaries, and clinics that do receive compensation for procuring fetal organs and tissues, thus putting an end to this reprehensible trafficking in fetal tissue.

I believe the proposal that Senator Kirk and I offer to our colleagues is a more targeted approach, a fairer approach, an approach that will be based on the facts, and is the best way forward as we deal with this important issue. I encourage my colleagues to join us in support of our more targeted legislation.

This is the bill that should we proceed to the underlying legislation, would be offered as a substitute to the bill by Senator Kirk and me.

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