Hire More Heroes Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise to strongly oppose this cynical and opportunistic ploy to fulfill a longtime ideological goal to defund Planned Parenthood.
Let's talk facts, not rhetoric. The fact is no Federal funds can be used for an abortion. No Federal funds can be used for an abortion, except in the dire circumstances of rape, incest or the life of the mother.
Here is another fact. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's work is dedicated to abortion services. The other 97 percent of their work is dedicated to preventive women's health services, such as STD testing and screenings, contraception, Pap tests, breast exams, cancer screenings, and other services, such as adoption referrals, pediatric care, and immunizations. So when someone says let's defund Planned Parenthood because they never liked that it ever existed, what they are saying to women, particularly low-income women, women in low-income communities, and many women of color is that they won't have access to a wide range of essential services because of an ideological desire to control what choices are being made by women and their doctors.
I fail to see the logic here. This exploitative movement, advanced by special interests, would effectively tell a
half million American women: Sorry, you can't have a breast exam this year. Of all the issues that we are going to debate on the floor right now, why are we debating this? Why are we telling 400,000 American women: Sorry, you won't be able to have a lifesaving screening for cervical cancer.
We have kids in all 50 States who are going hungry during summer vacation because their parents can't afford to have that extra lunch they normally got from school. We have college graduates who can't afford to start their lives, buy a home, get married, and have kids because they are drowning in student debt. We have men and women in this country who work 40 hours a week, with no vacation days, no sick days, and are still stuck in poverty. That is not my vision of the American Dream.
We have millions of hard-working Americans who have to quit their jobs and lose paychecks every time they have a family emergency. It doesn't matter if it is a new baby. It doesn't matter if their husband is dying of cancer. It doesn't matter if their mother is on her deathbed. They don't have access to paid family and medical leave. We are literally the only industrialized country that doesn't have paid leave.
This makes no sense in a country that believes if you work hard every day, you will be able to get into the middle class. That is simply not true for low-wage workers who are working 40 hours a week and are still below the poverty line and cannot meet those family needs because they have no paid leave.
But the issue this body wants to debate is defunding Planned Parenthood. This body wants to make sure that millions of women don't get basic access to health care. Whether or not to maliciously hurt an organization that provides vital health services to millions of American women--this is the issue our colleagues are using to threaten yet another government shutdown--controlling women's choices about their health, about their families, about their reproductive health care.
It is clear that some of my colleagues just want to roll back Roe v. Wade. That is their goal. That is their mission in life. It is ideologically driven and funded by special interests. That is their mission. But we should not return to the days when women had no medical independence.
Some of my colleagues will use any excuse they can to overreact and force this same tired old Planned Parenthood debate on us. But here is the fundamental truth about Planned Parenthood. Millions of women in this country--women in low-income communities, women of color, women in every State--rely on Planned Parenthood for basic health care--mammograms, cervical screenings, access to contraception, and family planning. They rely on it to prevent disease. They rely on it to detect disease. They rely on it to treat disease. We cannot and will not defund Planned Parenthood.
I yield the floor.
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