[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2842-S2843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           WOMEN'S HEALTHCARE

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, over the past couple of months, we have 
seen State legislatures around the country taking drastic, 
unconstitutional steps to insert themselves into personal, private 
healthcare decisions that should be--and have been in the past--between 
a woman and her doctor.
  Ohio and Georgia, two States that wouldn't seem on the surface to 
have that much in common, have both passed laws that would 
fundamentally eliminate a woman's right to make her own healthcare 
decisions.
  Who made these laws? It is always the same. It is predominantly men 
who don't even understand how women's bodies and how preventive care 
like birth control work.
  We have one Ohio legislator, a man, who sponsored a bill banning 
insurance companies from covering certain types of birth control, and 
then he admitted he didn't really know how birth control actually 
works.
  When asked about the different kinds of medications and birth control 
devices, he said: ``I don't know because I'm not smart enough to 
know.'' But he thinks he should make decisions for women.
  You would think he is smart enough to know better. You would think 
that millions of Ohio women know best how to take care of their own 
bodies.
  He was also making up medical procedures. He actually wrote into a 
version of the Ohio bill an exception allowing insurance companies to 
cover a made-up medical procedure where a doctor would reimplant an egg 
from an ectopic pregnancy.
  This is a total fantasy. No such medical procedure exists, yet that 
is what he did.
  He is 1 of 99 votes in the Ohio legislature, and he happens to be in 
the majority, and he happens to be one of the authors of these bills, 
and he happens to be a supporter of whatever it takes to put Planned 
Parenthood out of business.
  It is not only idiotic to suggest that those medical procedures 
exist, it is actively harmful to spread information, not to mention 
insensitive or cruel--that might be the better word--to the women and 
families coping with the very real struggles involved in an ectopic 
pregnancy. That inaccuracy in the law could create serious confusion 
about how and when doctors could treat women for ectopic pregnancies 
and put women's health at risk.
  After he was asked over and over again what in the world he was 
talking about, he said: ``That's clearly not my area of expertise.''
  Yet he was going to legislate in an area where, self-admittedly, he 
didn't have expertise. He was going to tell women what they had to do--
fantasy or not--with birth control. He was going to try to tell women 
what to do with their own bodies. He thought it was a good idea to 
legislate on it and to insert himself in the medical decisions of 
millions of women in my State.
  Unfortunately, this administration is only making things worse. 
President Trump and the men he has put in charge, the judges he has 
appointed--look at the Supreme Court--put their thumb on the scale of 
justice, always choosing corporations over workers, always choosing 
Wall Street over consumers, always choosing insurance companies over 
sick people and, frankly, increasingly over women's bodies and women's 
decisions.
  President Trump and the men he has put in charge are encouraging 
these male lawmakers in States like Ohio and Georgia and Alabama, where 
it may be worst of all--they are taking the country backward when it 
comes to women's health.
  Rather than making it easier for women to get care, they make it 
harder. This administration put out a new rule 2 weeks ago that would 
allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide needed care for a woman 
if the treatment supposedly violates their personal beliefs.
  In other words, if a woman had a miscarriage and she came in needing 
emergency care, the doctor could refuse to treat her simply based on 
his own personal issues and biases. How does that follow the physician 
mantra of ``do no harm''?
  It is not just medical professionals who could refuse care; it is 
hospitals, and it is insurance companies too. I don't know how anyone 
could suggest a for-profit insurance company has a conscience, yet, 
apparently under these kinds of laws, it does.
  Under this rule, an insurance company can consider the coverage of 
some services--and we know these are always services related to women, 
and they are always services related to LGBTQ people, all Americans--
against that corporation's supposed conscience. So if the corporation 
doesn't believe in human rights, doesn't believe in equality of gay 
people, of LGBTQ people, doesn't believe women should have control over 
their bodies, that corporation, licensed under the law--they have a 
conscience, and they can refuse care. That is what these legislatures 
are doing, and that is what this President wants to do.
  That conscience clause that these corporations and these insurance 
companies say they believe--I wish that conscience clause would kick in 
when they are raising premiums, when they deny people coverage for 
their medication. When they take away an exclusion for a preexisting 
condition, where they cancel someone's insurance or never insure them 
because of a preexisting condition, that is not a conscience thing 
because they are a corporation, but when it comes to women's health, it 
is.
  One woman from Butler County in Southwest Ohio wrote, and she said:

       I'd like to know why insurance companies are allowed to 
     pick and choose the drugs they will and will not cover. Since 
     when did they become doctors?

  This is just the latest in a long line of rules that hurt women.
  They have rolled back title X protections, instituting a new gag rule 
that would ban many clinics from talking about birth control and family 
planning options with their patients, limiting their patients' access 
to accurate medical information.
  I just don't understand. Some of these people don't like abortion. I 
understand that. They want to take away women's healthcare decisions, 
but they will not help women get contraceptives, and they will not 
explain the options women have when they come in and want to talk to 
the doctor about those kinds of things. I just don't get that.
  I get letters from women in Ohio who also don't get that, who are 
scared about what these changes mean.
  One woman from Mahoning County wrote to me:

       I am a 24 year old woman living with PCOS, a hormonal 
     disorder. Complications of PCOS include Type 2 Diabetes, high 
     risks of miscarriage and infertility, and even cancer.
       It is not curable, but it can be treated with birth 
     control.
       This domestic gag order will put millions of women at risk 
     across this country.

  Let me read again what she said:

       I am a 24 year old woman living with PCOS, a hormonal 
     disorder. Complications include Type 2 Diabetes, high risk of 
     miscarriage and infertility, even cancer.
       It is not curable, but can be treated with birth control.
       This domestic gag order will put millions of women at risk 
     across the country.

  Who said these people can practice medicine when they are without a 
license and do these kinds of things?
  I hope my colleagues will think about these women. I hope my 
colleagues, especially my male colleagues, will spend a little more 
time trying to help women get the healthcare they need instead of 
trying to meddle in decisions that always, always, always should be 
between a woman and her doctor.
  I yield the floor.

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