“You are not only putting women’s lives at risk, but you want to deny them the chance to hold their baby who will not survive.”

Video (YouTube)

WASHINGTON – Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Co-Chair of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus, delivered an impassioned floor speech condemning H.R. 21, Republicans’ latest extreme, cruel and misleading anti-abortion legislation. The bill puts new criminal penalties and reporting requirements on health care providers, injecting politicians into the patient-physician relationship and disregarding medical expertise with the intent to bully and scare. The bill would also interfere with parents’ ability to hold and comfort their child with a terminal diagnosis, mandating invasive and ineffective medical intervention.

A full transcript of the Congresswoman’s remarks is available below and the video is available here.

Transcript: Pressley Condemns GOP’s Cruel Anti-Abortion Bill That Criminalizes Providers and Denies Families Care
January 23, 2025
U.S. House of Representatives

Thank you, Mr. Raskin.

Well, another day under Republican majority of an anti-science, anti-facts healthcare agenda.

I don’t know which is worse, the cruelty or the ignorance on full display here across the aisle.

I would ask my colleagues, have you ever met or spoken to a woman who had abortion care late in pregnancy?

If you had, what you would have heard her share is about the nursery that she lovingly decorated.

If you had, what you would [have] heard her share was about the name that she picked out.

If you had, then you would have heard her share about how her world collapsed all around her when learning of her baby’s devastating medical diagnosis.

Let me be clear what you’re doing here.

You are not only putting women’s lives at risk, but you want to deny them the chance to hold their baby who will not survive.

I don’t know what God you serve, but the God I serve is one of love and mercy.

And [one that would] not deny a mother final moments with a dying child, or subject her to caring a lifeless fetus around.

You want to force your way into the exam room during one of the most impossible, dangerous moments in someone’s life.

When a family learns their baby has a fatal diagnosis and will be born with only a short time to live, some people make the decision to end the pregnancy so they can hold their baby during their final moments.

How cruel that Republicans in Congress would deny them that small comfort.

In these dire situations, families forgo treatment which has no hope of saving their baby’s lives and instead spend time comforting them and saying goodbye.

Physicians who care for families have shared how their patients spend this very limited, devastating time with their infants.

So once again we have ignorant, uninformed men — who think they know better than doctors and mothers — taking to the House floor to deny us our medical care.

Another day under Republican majority. 

Enough. I yield.

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