Barbara Boxer: “That is right. But it is even worse because the language Tom Harkin had written into the bill, the sense-of-the-Senate…”

“That is right. But it is even worse because the language Tom Harkin had written into the bill, the sense-of-the-Senate language, is now being stripped out of the bill by the House. The reason we are here talking about this is, I want the Senate to disagree with what the House did. It is bad enough to do what we have done here without my vote--and I believe without yours, although I am not sure in the end how you voted. The bottom line is, it is bad enough to ban a procedure and make no exception for the health of a woman. It is so violative of her rights and her dignity and of the respect that is due her. But in addition, they stripped out the language we added that said, maybe people, for whatever reason, are going to vote for this, but we also want to go on record in support of Roe. The reason we are here now is that the House, rather than take that language and send it off to the President, would have gotten their ban with a little sense-of-the-Senate language that supported Roe. No, the House had to prolong this, strip this out. And now to get to conference, we have to have a motion to disagree with what the House did, which I hope we will disagree with what they did. So what I was trying to do and what Harkin was trying to do--and we all were trying to do--is say: S. 3 has problems, but you should know we still support Roe.”