Prohibiting Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. COATS. Madam President, William Wilberforce is a man whom I have, over the years, looked to as a role model and an example of what public service should be and what public servants should be.

Wilberforce served as a Member of the British Parliament from 1784 to 1812. After an early career marked by what he described as doing nothing of purpose, Wilberforce then went through a transformational period of self-reflection. He emerged with a deepened faith, greater moral courage, and an unshakeable passion for ending the slave trade. He said:

So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.

It took Wilberforce 20 years of blood, sweat, tears, and even death threats, but he succeeded in pushing the House of Commons and the House of Lords to put abolition into law when the Slave Trade Act of 1807 passed.

I believe today, just 2 hours from now, we will have a William Wilberforce moment facing the Senate. Through a series of video releases over the past few weeks, the American people have learned about the shocking and barbaric practices Planned Parenthood uses to terminate innocent human lives. In several different videos, senior Planned Parenthood officials openly and candidly discussed the organ harvesting of fetuses.

In one video, the senior director of medical research for Planned Parenthood explained the process by which aborted body parts are harvested. I am not going to describe that process on the floor. I talked about it last week. But for those who have seen the video and those who have read about the practices, it is abhorrent to hear the cold, calculating consideration of how best to disassemble, to tear apart, to rip apart a growing life so that they could harvest certain body parts and then sell them for research. And they were negotiating prices.

It was like describing to somebody how they could go to Home Depot and pick things off the shelf: Let's see what this costs; no, maybe we can get a better price for this. But in this case we are talking about living human tissue being taken, harvested, and sold from aborted babies.

So let's consider for a second what is the bottom line. The bottom line is we are talking about an organization that is embracing the dismembering of human life with taxpayer support. Millions of Americans who have seen these videos are outraged by the cavalier attitude that Planned Parenthood has about human life. Americans from all walks of life, Americans of different faiths and, maybe, even of different political parties abhor this.

Then we learned that our tax dollars, our hard-earned tax dollars, are sent to an organization that practices these methods. Surely, we can come to a conclusion that this is something that violates the faith and beliefs of many millions Americans and is subsidized by the Federal taxpayer?

Now, over the past few days, we have heard many who say they object to what Planned Parenthood is doing here. But, you know, we can't afford to stop funding many of the very important women's health services that Planned Parenthood provides. And this is an important consideration because I am sure every Senator here believes in ensuring that all women, regardless of their status and regardless of their financial situation, deserve to have access to vital services that health care providers provide.

The bill before us that we will be voting on today, offered by the Presiding Officer, Senator Ernst of Iowa, addresses these concerns. Her legislation would transfer money provided to Planned Parenthood to a whole range of women's health care providers. I have the bill here in front of me. It is very simple, a very basic bill.

I want to read from this bill:

State and county health departments, community health centers, hospitals, physicians offices, and other entities currently provide, and will continue to provide, health services to women. Such health services include relevant diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, prenatal and postpartum care, immunization, family planning services including contraception, sexually transmitted disease testing, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and referrals.

The bill goes on to say that such entities provide services to all persons, regardless of their ability to pay and provide services in medically underserved areas and to medically underserved populations.

So what is being offered here and what we will be voting on this evening doesn't take anything away from women's ability--regardless of their financial situation or where they live--to have the services that are needed and need to ensure their health and the future health of their children.

In the United States there are five times as many community health centers as there are Planned Parenthood operations. In my own State, we have 108 community health centers in urban and rural areas all throughout the State of Indiana--5 times the amount of Planned Parenthood facilities. So the issue of denying women needed health care simply is not the case under this legislation.

The barbaric practice of conducting abortions in a way that promotes harvesting fetal organs or profiting from such practice has no place in a modern society. Planned Parenthood's practices, I would suggest, should not receive a dime of taxpayer money. The question is, Do we want taxpayer dollars to continue to support an organization that treats human body parts like a product on the shelves of a store?

Today the Senate will decide if we fight for what we believe is morally right or whether we stand by and allow the trivialization of life to continue.

I am here to urge my colleagues to vote yes on this vitally important piece of legislation that we will be taking up in less than 2 hours.

I yield the floor.

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