Steny Hoyer: “The Hoyer-Greenwood bill would have prevented any abortion, not just by this procedure but by any procedure, I tell the…”

“The Hoyer-Greenwood bill would have prevented any abortion, not just by this procedure but by any procedure, I tell the gentleman from Kentucky, on healthy women with healthy babies. This bill that the gentleman is supporting will prevent not one abortion, not one. Why? Because it deals with only one procedure. There are other procedures, and I presume that the gentleman believes those procedures are equally, in his terms, barbaric. If he does not, I would yield for a question on that issue. But my assumption is he does. So the issue here is whether they are going to allow in order Hoyer-Greenwood. The Republican Party, when it was in the minority, railed against the Democrats for arbitrarily and arrogantly preventing amendments to reflect different views. They said we wanted to prevent open and fair debate. Not only did the Committee on Rules last night prevent debate and prevent other amendments, they also prevented even the work of their own committee. They had the temerity to reject out of hand the committee process. This group that came to reform the Congress in 1995 and talk about process, talk about fairness, talk about openness, this rule is outrageous, America, because it does not allow the views of the American public to be reflected on this floor and allow Members the right to say, as I want to tell my constituents, and I presume many do as well, I am against late-term abortion, period.”