Jackie Speier: “I thank the leader of our caucus, Ms. Frankel. Madam Speaker, I am just going to close with some expectations. I am…”

“I thank the leader of our caucus, Ms. Frankel. Madam Speaker, I am just going to close with some expectations. I am leaving Congress this year, and I want to convey to you, Madam Speaker, to the leadership of the Democratic Women's Caucus, and to all of my colleagues how important I think that you are as guardians of womanhood. Our job is never done. So while we may celebrate these small victories from time to time, the ERA is not part of our Constitution. Of the 193 countries in the world, 165 have the ERA in their Constitutions. The United States does not. It is 24 little words. Thirty-eight States have passed it. We have this deadline that we have struck from the legislation in the House. The Senate has not taken it up. Femicide is a huge problem in Latin America. The Democratic Women's Caucus will have a presentation this Friday on that. The 5,000 missing Native-American women in this country that really we had no cognizance of until we had a Native-American woman in the Congress to talk about it. Finally, a new issue--probably not a new issue--is one that has just percolated to the surface, and that is female inmates in Federal prisons who are raped by the wardens, the chaplains, and the guards. Congresswoman Bass, Congressman Swalwell, and I went to the Federal correctional institution in Dublin this week. Now, at that one prison, the warden had raped inmates, the chaplain had raped inmates, and two of the guards that we know of had raped inmates.…”