Matt Rosendale: “I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding to me. Madam Speaker, my constituents sent me here to Washington to…”

“I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding to me. Madam Speaker, my constituents sent me here to Washington to fight tooth and nail on behalf of the unborn. I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 239, the Equal Access to Contraception Act for Veterans. This radical piece of legislation would require taxpayers to subsidize the full cost of all contraception through the Department of Veterans Affairs, including Plan B and Ella. Let me be clear, drugs like Plan B and Ella are not contraception, they are abortifacients. These chemical drugs prevent a newly conceived embryo, a human embryo, from implanting in the uterus and continuing to develop as a child. Again, that is not contraception, that is abortion. Using taxpayer funding for abortions is not only wildly unpopular, it is immoral. It forces tens of millions of people who have personal or religious objections to abortion and abortifacient drugs to fund the termination of life. That must not and should not be the public's obligation. The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable, especially the unborn. Since the ruling of Roe v. Wade, well over 62 billion abortions have occurred in the United States. To put it in perspective, that is more than the amount of worldwide casualties directly caused by World War II, the most deadly military conflict in the history of the world. The loss of life on such a tragic, massive scale due to abortion is heinous.…”