[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 6, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H2337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEVASTATING ANTI-CHOICE BILL
(Mr. QUIGLEY asked and was given permission to address the House for
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. QUIGLEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today because in a few short days
this body will consider an extreme and devastating anti-choice bill.
H.R. 3 attempted to redefine rape, aims to ban private insurance
coverage of reproductive health care, and imposes tax penalties on
plans that include care.
These unprecedented provisions have been widely debated, and it is my
hope that the American people will realize the severity of this bill
and that their Representatives will stop it. But my fear is throughout
this debate, a dangerous provision of H.R. 3 has been overlooked,
making permanent the Medicaid abortion ban, or the Hyde amendment. It
is dangerous because if the extreme provisions are stripped out as a
``compromise,'' we are left with a ban that permanently bars poor women
from accessing care, and we have still lost.
Let's call the abortion ban what it really is: a ban on
constitutionally protected health care that poor women cannot afford on
their own. I encourage my colleagues to stand with poor women
struggling to make ends meet around the Nation, in staunch opposition
to any Medicaid abortion ban and H.R. 3.
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