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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. It doesn't change the number of abortions in America. It doesn't raise insurance costs. It doesn't do anything else.

It just says to a nurse that doesn't want to perform abortions that her hospital can't compel her to be able to perform abortions. That seems like a pretty reasonable bill. Obviously, my colleague disagrees on that. But he wants to instead bring a bill that dramatically could increase the number of abortions in America.

There used to be a time where we used to talk about abortion being safe, legal, and rare. That doesn't even seem to be in the conversation anymore, and it is just how do we get more.

Planned Parenthood did almost half a million abortions alone. And I know there is a lot of conversation saying they do health screenings and such. They are most known for doing abortions--about a half a million of them. Planned Parenthood does two abortions a minute across the United States--a minute.

The problem is, this Planned Parenthood entity that has $2 billion in income and nearly $2.5 billion in assets is also one that has faced very serious allegations. One of the most recent serious allegations came from the ``far-right'' newspaper the New York Times.

The New York Times, which is not exactly known for being a right- leaning periodical, did an extensive article outlining the problems with Planned Parenthood all across the country. Let me just read to this body part of what the New York Times printed about Planned Parenthood.

They talked about the botched abortions that they have done in New York and the scores of allegations that the New York Times reviewed and the times that they said that Planned Parenthood gave ``poor care.''

Here is another quote from them:

In a case settled in California last year, a woman accused the organization of improperly implanting a birth control device in her arm and causing nerve damage.

A Nebraska clinician in 2022 did not realize that a woman was four months pregnant when she inserted an IUD. Several hours later, the patient was rushed to an emergency room and gave birth to a stillborn fetus.

For months last year at the North Central States affiliate, which oversees the Nebraska clinic, an understaffed nursing department did not upload sexually transmitted infection test results into charts, and patients wrongly believed that their results were negative when they did not hear back.

Not only is Planned Parenthood doing a half a million abortions, but even according to the New York Times, the testing that they are doing and the other work that they are doing, they are botching.

This is how they listed the Omaha Planned Parenthood clinic:

[S]ewage from a backed-up toilet seeped into the abortion recovery room for two days, according to interviews with staff members and photographs and text messages shared with The Times. Employees shoved exam table pads under the bathroom door to block the leak. Patients vomited from the stench.

Sewage seeped under the door at a Planned Parenthood facility in Omaha last year.

[C]linic workers complained that they were learning from inexperienced peers. More than a dozen said they did not receive adequate training for patient intake, blood draws and other tasks.

They go on and on and on. It is a very long article that the New York Times laid in there and talked about how that wealthy donors have stepped in to be able to help fill the gaps but that Planned Parenthood is not using that actually for healthcare; Planned Parenthood is using the money donated to them for their political operation--not patient care.

So when my colleague says that Republicans don't want to provide funding to Planned Parenthood, it is true because of not only their medical records and for what is happening all around the country in these locations, but this has become a political operation more than a healthcare operation.

We have a lot of great--I mean great--federally qualified health centers all around the country that are doing a terrific job taking care of families and women in many places, but they are not specializing in abortion. Planned Parenthood is focused on abortion. And even according to the New York Times, they are not even doing a good job at that.

So, yes, I do oppose this, and I do object to providing more money for an entity that is not taking care of even what it is already doing and is focused on taking the life of children, not protecting the lives of families.

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