Pregnant Students' Rights Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Education and Workforce Committee, Mr. Bobby Scott, for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, like so many women across the country, I struggled for so many years to get pregnant. My husband and I tried everything that we could do to start a family of our own. Being a mom for me was what I always wanted to do. I wanted to be the best mom that I could be.

When we finally succeeded, I remember that I had never really been so happy. All the prayers I prayed to God, I finally felt like my prayers were answered. The moment I prayed for, for years, was happening. I wanted to tell everyone that I was going to be a mom, but one day I woke up covered in blood.

It is hard to describe the agony of a miscarriage. It is hard to describe the heartbreak and the utter helplessness. You fall directly into pain and despair.

After my second miscarriage, I wondered if God ever had plans for me to be a mom. When I got pregnant a third time, I was completely overjoyed. At 4 months, I was rushed to the hospital where I learned I had suffered a fetal demise. That means a stillborn.

My doctors thought it would be safer to end the pregnancy naturally. For 2 weeks, I carried my stillborn child within my womb, within my belly. For 2 weeks, I carried that lost pregnancy.

For 2 weeks, I carried my dead fetus as they waited for me to go into labor. I never ended up going into labor on my own. When the doctors finally induced me, I faced the pain of childbirth without the hope for a living child.

This story is uniquely mine, but it is not just my story. Millions of women in our country--women in this room, women all throughout America, women that people here actually know and love--have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Congress should be making sure that women are aware of all of their rights, not just cherry-picking the ones that we want to highlight over others to make a point about abortion.

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Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, for the women in your life whose stories you don't even know, for the women across the country whose lives you may not even understand--the choices and the environments that they live in--and for the women in America who have gone through things some people can never even imagine, I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this misguided bill.

It is not that we are not trying to empower women who are making choices during their pregnancy. That is not it at all. Let's make sure that they are empowered with every tool, every resource, and every bit of information they deserve to make the choices they need to make about their lives, their bodies, and their pregnancies.

This body should not determine what decisions they make for themselves. We talk about God. God gives us choice. God gives us choice to make the decisions that we believe are best for ourselves. We have no right to take those choices away from them.

Mr. Speaker, I ask every colleague on the other side of the aisle--I have been there. I have had to make choices. Let's do the right thing and make sure that every woman has the full breadth of the ability to make the choices that she needs to make.

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