Press Releases

(As prepared for delivery)

Happy New Year, Mr. Chairman, and to all of our Committee members. 

Turning to the legislation at hand, after the least productive session of Congress since the Great Depression, I had hoped we’d open the new session on a better note, working together to help the people we represent. Instead, I am gravely disappointed to see that, with today’s agenda, the Majority has all but farmed itself out to be an arm of the Trump re-election campaign. Look no further than his comments last night, where he bragged about stripping women of their essential rights and freedoms. He called the end of Roe v Wade: “a miracle.”

Next week, Washington will be the site of the largest anti-abortion rally in the country, and this legislation is to pander to attendees.  

Rather than listen to women about what they and their families need, or take action to address child poverty, the Majority has chosen to pursue another political talking point. What’s worse, with this bill, they are choosing to divert money away from needy families to dangerous anti-abortion centers.

This isn’t about health care or reproductive freedom or even their wildly unpopular anti-abortion agenda, it’s fundamentally about control. Republicans have long been on a crusade to control and limit the rights of women.

Our Committee has work to do, and people depend on us to do so. We should be focused on addressing the maternal health crisis in this country, which is harming black women most of all.

This committee’s mission is to safeguard health care, not attack it. After all, abortion care is health care, and it is overwhelmingly safe. But when health care is difficult or even impossible to access, that’s when complications arise, and health outcomes worsen. We’ve seen horror after horror come out of Texas since their Republican governor and Supreme Court banned proper care.

Around the country, anti-abortion centers masquerading as health care providers are jeopardizing women’s health and endangering their lives. In Massachusetts, one of these centers failed to correctly diagnose a woman’s ectopic pregnancy because the staff wasn’t qualified to be handling medical care. This misdiagnosis gravely endangered her life and necessitated emergency surgery a month later.

Furthermore, these centers aren’t held to the same privacy or care standards as health providers.

This is not acceptable medical care, and it’s horrifying that some of these propaganda centers are getting federal funding legally designated for serving poor children. This bill wants to fund more dangerous propaganda and more undeserving facilities of this kind. Women are being put in harm’s way, their health is on the line, and it is all in the service of far-right ideology.

Beyond that, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that we are only 9 days from another potential Republican government shutdown. That’s the fourth this Congress! Another damaging, but completely avoidable outcome for our economy and America’s families.

Republicans are wasting precious time with political stunts like this one, which everyone in this room understands has zero chance of becoming law.

If Republicans wanted to pass legislation that lived up to the name of this bill, they could start by addressing the growing child care shortage caused by cutting off emergency child care funding and the enhanced dependent care tax credits that Democrats championed during the pandemic.

Or they could address the historic rise—a doubling—of child poverty caused by their refusal to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit.

Or they could make paid family and medical leave a reality and spare struggling families from having to make the heartbreaking decision between caring for a loved one and losing a needed paycheck.

If you want to support parents, and support pregnant women, let’s start by helping them, not misinforming them, criminalizing them, and making their lives harder.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.