Protect Life Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership.

I rise in opposition to this bill, the so-called Protect Life Act.

First of all, over and over again we repeat the premise that somehow we're using government funds through the Affordable Care Act for abortion. We are not. No matter how many times you say it, the fact is that we specifically precluded that from happening.

What this bill does goes much further. It threatens to make it harder for women across the country to receive health care that they need. I understand the doctor who just said that the termination of a pregnancy is not health care. I understand his premise. But I also understand that we in America have adopted the premise that if a woman comes to the hospital and has at great risk to her life a pregnancy which is causing her health to be at great risk and her life as well, what this bill does is say you don't have to intervene under those circumstances. I don't think that's protecting life, I say to my friend. In fact, I think it is ignoring the protection of life.

Moreover, it does nothing to create jobs, which is what Congress should be focusing on during this time when so many Americans are out of work. Very frankly, you have criticized the President of the United States for submitting a jobs bill to this Congress that doesn't have a chance of passage. I have heard that over and over again. All of you know this has no chance of passage. It may pass this House--I hope not; I urge its defeat--but it won't pass. It won't become law.

So while millions of Americans' quality of life is put at risk because of the lack of jobs and opportunity that they have, we consider what I believe is simply legislation to speak to a particular interest group in our parties. I understand that.

Republicans come to this floor and speak all the time about keeping government out of people's lives, but this bill does exactly the opposite. What it says is that women won't be able to spend their own money on comprehensive reform for reproductive coverage under a new health exchange. You don't want us to tell people they have to have insurance, but you want to tell them what they can't have in an insurance--with their own money. I'm not sure I get the distinction there. Maybe you can come up with a distinction, but it certainly is a very nuanced one, if it exists at all.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. PALLONE. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. HOYER. Even more unbelievably, the bill will allow a hospital to refuse women emergency care of this kind even when necessary to save their lives. I don't think that's what you intend. I certainly hope it's not. But it is the interpretation that many of us have put on the language of your bill.

So, ladies and gentlemen of this House, this issue has been debated over and over again. We adopted a Hyde amendment. The premise of the Hyde amendment was that we shouldn't take taxpayers' money and spend it on abortion.

Very frankly, I represent 60,000 Federal employees. We precluded them from using the salary that they receive to buy insurance that has abortion coverage. It's their money. I hear that all the time: It's their money. But you don't allow them to use their money for that purpose. Now you are saying to the private sector women: You can't use your money.

You can't have it both ways. Either it's their money for services they constitutionally can receive or it's not.

Defeat this bill. This is a difficult issue. Let us let women, doctors, and their faith deal with it.

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