Quigley Speaks Out Against Extreme Anti-Choice Bill

Mr. Speaker, I rise today, because in a few short days, this body will consider the most extreme and devastating anti-choice bill the House has ever seen.

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 abortion 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 that throughout this debate, a dangerous provision of H.R. 3 has been overlooked: making permanent the Medicaid abortion ban, or the Hyde amendment.

Dangerous, because if the extreme provisions are stripped out as a "compromise and we are left with a ban that permanently bars poor women from accessing care " We have still lost. Let's call the Medicaid 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 me, and with women struggling to make ends meet around the nation, in staunch opposition to any Medicaid abortion ban and HR 3.