[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8250]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE UNAFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE BILL

  (Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York asked and was given permission 
to address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, currently a panel 
of Republican Senators are deciding the fate of millions of American 
women's healthcare. Tragically, their starting point is the House-
passed bill that would force new moms on Medicaid to return to work 
right after birth, reduce women's access to copays for contraception, 
weaken protections for preexisting conditions like pregnancy, and 
eliminate the guarantee of essential health benefits that provides 
services like mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, services that 
save lives.
  All of these measures hurt women--and only women--and will do 
enormous harm to the health and well-being of women from childhood to 
old age. It is an outrage and a gross injustice when women are treated 
so unequally with such gross disparity and such total disregard for 
their lives and well-being.
  It is one more powerful reason why this Congress should pass and send 
to the States to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, declaring in no 
uncertain terms that women are entitled to equal rights, equal justice, 
equal treatment, equal protection under the law, and that means equal 
treatment in healthcare. In this country, it is time, at long last, for 
equal to mean just that, equal.

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