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

Floor Speech

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Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to speak in strong opposition to legislation that would defund Planned Parenthood and jeopardize women's access to health care.

Each year Planned Parenthood opens its doors to millions of Americans, including more than 54,000 people in my State of Minnesota, people who need affordable, quality health care, such as breast and cervical cancer screenings, pregnancy tests, and family planning services. One in five women in this country has received that care at Planned Parenthood, and for many women Planned Parenthood is their primary source of health care. Yet today the Senate is considering opening debate on a proposal to defund Planned Parenthood--a proposal to block this health care provider from continued participation in our Federal safety net health programs. It is a proposal that would close Planned Parenthood's doors and leave millions without a provider.

Make no mistake, this proposal has nothing to do with protecting women's health. Instead, it advances a political agenda that threatens women's ability to receive often lifesaving care. In my State of Minnesota alone, Planned Parenthood provided more than 9,000 cervical cancer screenings and nearly 14,000 screenings for breast cancer in just 1 year. These screenings save women's lives, women such as Liz Steele from Minneapolis.

Liz's first job after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire didn't offer health insurance, so she relied on Planned Parenthood for basic health care services. When a blood sample taken during a routine physical exam more than 25 years ago indicated that Liz had a deadly form of leukemia, the nurse practitioner who cared for Liz at Planned Parenthood tracked her down and connected her with a physician who treated her cancer and saved her life. Liz said, ``Without [the nurse's] persistence, I quite frankly wouldn't be here right now. Planned Parenthood is responsible for saving my life.''

Unfortunately, the bill we are discussing today ignores women like Liz. Rather than recognizing Planned Parenthood's role in protecting women's health, the legislation continues a series of unrelenting attacks on Planned Parenthood and on women's access to basic health care. We have seen this strategy before. In 2007, the Senate voted on a measure that would have eliminated support for any health care provider--including Planned Parenthood--that provides safe, legal abortion services. In 2011, the Senate voted on a proposal that singled out Planned Parenthood by name and would have disqualified it from receiving Federal support. Each time, these attempts to place political hurdles between a woman and the health care provider of her choice failed--by a vote of 41 to 52 in 2007 and 42 to 58 in 2011. Today's attempt will fail as well.

Recently, antiabortion activists secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood doctors and staff. In these videos, some of the physicians captured on tape did not treat the issue of reproductive health services with the appropriate level of sensitivity. I was glad to see that the president of Planned Parenthood apologized for the tone of those remarks.

But these videos--deceptively edited to paint a misleading picture of the organization--were designed to distort the truth and create controversy, a controversy that opponents of reproductive rights are now exploiting by pushing the same failed strategy, only this time they have focused their opposition to reproductive rights in disingenuous rhetoric that purports to value women's health.

The bill's lead sponsor claimed that ``[t]here will be no reduction in overall federal funding available to support women's health.'' Another cosponsor of this legislation claimed the bill would ``provide additional money for women's primary health care services,'' but the bill's operative language makes no
such commitment. It merely provides that ``no federal funds may be made available to Planned Parenthood.'' What the bill's proponents choose not to acknowledge is that Planned Parenthood health centers serve 36 percent of all patients who receive health care from a federally supported women's health center--more than any other provider--but those sponsors have no plan for where the millions of patients currently receiving health care from Planned Parenthood would go if this legislation were successful--no plan.

Moreover, claims that opponents of Planned Parenthood support continuing or even increasing funding for women's health services are especially hard to believe in light of the fact that some of the same people also support cutting the very programs that fund women's health services now. Just a little over 1 month ago, House appropriators approved a spending bill that would completely eliminate the title X family planning program--the Nation's only Federal program exclusively dedicated to reproductive health care. Senate appropriators proposed slashing title X--a program that is already running on fumes--by $30 million. So claims that a bill to ban one of America's most trusted health care providers from Federal programs would support women's health--claims made while the bill's proponents are working to gut Federal programs that provide services like breast and pelvic exams, contraceptives, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and HIV--are nothing short of preposterous.

It is no secret that attacks on Planned Parenthood are part and parcel of a longstanding campaign to make safe and legal abortion in this country virtually impossible to access. Ironically, the defunding of Planned Parenthood would interfere with the delivery of health care that actually prevents unintended pregnancy and reduces the need for abortion. If the proponents of this bill were truly sincere in their desire to support women's health, they would embrace efforts to improve contraceptive coverage and increase access to birth control rather than continue to attack the Nation's No. 1 provider of basic women's health services.

The ability to access reproductive health care by the services that Planned Parenthood provides has a powerful effect on the choices women and families make every day--choices about finishing college or graduate school, whether to buy a home or start a business. The ability to decide whether or when to start a family shapes lives, and for nearly 100 years Planned Parenthood has played an important role in ensuring that women are able to make that decision for themselves and shape their own destinies. I urge my colleagues to resist the impulse to let politics stand between a woman and her health care and to oppose legislation to defund Planned Parenthood.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield to my colleague from Montana.

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