Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MALONEY. I rise in strong opposition to the Pence amendment, which will eliminate all funding for the many services provided by Planned Parenthood. That's the amendment that is before us, not the other items that other people are talking about.

This amendment is not merely anti-choice. It is also anti-health, anti-woman, and anti-poor, and is a thinly veiled attack on birth control. This amendment will not do anything to grow our economy or create any new jobs to help us out of this great recession. It will only turn this Nation backwards.

Planned Parenthood is the Nation's largest provider of family planning services; and for roughly 60 percent of their patients, they serve as the primary care physicians, as 90 percent of the health care they provide every day is primary and preventive.

This is not about abortion. The Hyde amendment is alive and well, and it prevents and restricts any use of Federal funds for abortion. This is about primary and preventive health care. This anti-woman amendment will restrict millions of women from access to family planning, HIV testing and counseling, and breast and cervical cancer screening, leaving them with nowhere else to turn.

The other side's vision of smaller government would expand the government's power over women's choices. It is wrong, it is shortsighted, and it is unjust. Instead of getting between a woman and her doctor, instead of allowing women to have control over their own health care, instead of forcing personal beliefs on half the population, let's turn to the business of creating jobs and economic opportunity and away from the business of ruling other people's lives.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Pence amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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