Political Quotes

“I thank Dr. Bucshon for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, before I acknowledge my support for the Freedom for Health Care Workers Act, H.R. 497, I want to respond that as a physician, as a mother, as a working woman my entire life, and as a former director of public health, let me just say unequivocally that the care of ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion. That is a lie. That is a misconstruction. I want to put that to rest right now. Now, on to H.R. 497. This overdue legislation repeals the Biden administration's invasive vaccine mandate for America's healthcare workers who have borne a significant brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I have listened to this discourse, I thought we were back in 2020. It was deja vu all over again when we just started to have vaccines. We are not at the beginning of a pandemic. We are 2 years, almost 3 years, into a pandemic. Even before this pandemic, rural areas in southeastern Iowa, such as in my district, were already struggling with maintaining healthcare staffing levels. Existing challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic, which were then compounded by the vaccine mandates. Healthcare workers, if you will remember, Mr. Speaker, were lauded for over a year for going to work every single day. I was part of that, administering vaccines in all 24 counties in my district. They were lauded for going to work, putting themselves and their families at risk for a novel coronavirus of which we knew very little.…”