Connie Morella: “I am certainly pleased to be a cosponsor of the Sanchez- Morella-Lowey amendment. Actually, I did not recognize the…”

“I am certainly pleased to be a cosponsor of the Sanchez- Morella-Lowey amendment. Actually, I did not recognize the amendment when I heard my good friend from New Jersey speak about it, because actually what the amendment would do would be to restore a provision, a regulation that had been there earlier, to allow U.S. servicewomen stationed overseas access to the Department of Defense health facilities and allowing them to use their own funds to obtain legal abortion services in military hospitals. Women serving in the military overseas depend on their base hospitals for medical care. They may be stationed in areas where local health care facilities are inadequate, and this ban that we currently have might cause a woman who needs an abortion to delay the procedure while she looks for a safe provider or may force a woman to seek an illegal unsafe procedure locally. I want to point out that women who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces already give up many of their freedoms and risk their lives to defend our country, and they should not have to sacrifice their privacy, their health and their basic constitutional rights to a policy with no valid military purpose. The amendment is about women's health, it is about fairness, and it is also about economic fairness.”