National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment and associate myself with the very powerful statement made by my colleague from Virginia, it is just part of a very extreme agenda that is threatening to hijack the Nation's annual defense bill, which usually passes in a bipartisan way.

One of the core things they are trying to do through the NDAA, make no mistake, is to further their agenda to ban abortion on a nationwide basis, and I am here to sound the clarion call. They are going to be trying this week after week through the next few months.

The Jackson amendment, amendment No. 5, which we will be voting on in a few minutes, is a direct threat to the health and well-being of our servicemembers and their loved ones. If that amendment were to pass, it would put abortion access even further out of reach for our servicemembers, in particular, for the over 2 million people who are stationed in States where they have little to no access to abortion.

Even more appalling, this amendment would force a servicemember who was raped by one of her own colleagues or superiors to travel at their own expense to terminate a resulting pregnancy.

Our servicemembers fight for our country every day. As lawmakers, we should be prepared to fight to protect their freedoms, not voting to take their freedoms away.

Mr. Chair, I urge objection to this amendment, the Jackson No. 5 amendment, and all of these extreme amendments which are taking us away from the critical functions we should be providing.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source