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Floor Speech

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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, I have the greatest respect and admiration for my friend from Mississippi, but I have to say that I disagree with her interpretation of my piece of legislation.

This bill does three things and three things only: It protects the right of individuals to seek assistive reproductive technology without fear of being prosecuted for seeking that technology. It preserves the right of physicians to provide that assistive reproductive technology without fear of being prosecuted, and it also allows insurance companies to cover assistive reproductive technology.

That is all that it does. It does not force anyone to seek reproductive technology; it does not force anyone to offer it; it does not force anyone to cover it. It simply says you have a statutory right, should you choose to pursue assistive reproductive technology that you will be able to do so.

I also want to note that in Louisiana there is already State law that prohibits the ``discardation'' of frozen embryos or of frozen fertilized eggs.

This has already started. In Florida, there is a bill pending before the State legislature that would deem that a fertilized egg is a human being and provide the opportunity for penalties to be put into judgments for those who would discard those fertilized eggs. So this is a real threat today.

With that, I would like to yield to my colleague from Nevada.

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