[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 255]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    40TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V. WADE

  (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise today to commemorate 
the 40th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision by the 
Supreme Court. This decision is the firewall that protects women's 
health and the turning point that moved women's health forward.
  On this 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we reaffirm the 
constitutionally protected right of every woman to safe and legal 
health care. Women are nurturers, but when life places a woman in the 
most difficult of circumstances, the choices she needs to make should 
be free from government interference.
  Over the years, I have been proud to stand with many of my colleagues 
as we have beaten back repeated attempts to chip away at women's rights 
set forth in Roe v. Wade. Over the last 2 years, we have seen the most 
extreme and repeated attempts to take away a woman's right to her 
health care.
  In the most recent Congress, we found ourselves defending a woman's 
right to access contraception. We opposed a bill that would have 
allowed women to die if the emergency room employee who came to her aid 
had a ``conscientious objection'' to performing an abortion that would 
save her life, without even being required to refer her elsewhere for 
help.
  We have insisted that politicians not place themselves in the 
operating room to judge the motives of a woman seeking a 
constitutionally protected medical procedure if they thought her 
decision may have been based on the gender or race of the fetus.
  Mr. Speaker, we stand on the shoulders of giants of women who went 
before us on this, and we take up the cudgel to keep it safe and legal.

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