Chris Smith: “I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for yielding, and I want to thank her for her leadership, for being one of the…”

“I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for yielding, and I want to thank her for her leadership, for being one of the prime cosponsors of the bill, H.R. 7, along with Mrs. Black, Ms. Foxx, Mrs. Wagner, Mrs. Blackburn, Mrs. Noem, Mrs. Hartzler, and all the others who have joined in as sponsors of this lifesaving legislation. I would also like to thank Speaker Ryan, Majority Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers for their extraordinary leadership in defending the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us, unborn children, as well as providing protections for their mothers, and for bringing this legislation, H.R. 7, to the floor. Forty years ago, Madam Speaker, Congress enacted the Hyde amendment, a law that continues to this day to proscribe Federal Medicaid funds from being used to subsidize abortion in most circumstances. More than 20 peer-reviewed studies show that more than 2 million people are alive today, 2 million, because of the Hyde amendment. Two million people who would have been aborted, instead, survived because public funds were unavailable to effectuate their violent demise, while their mothers benefited from prenatal health care and support; 2 million survivors who have had the opportunity to live and to enjoy the most basic and the most elemental of all human rights, the right to life.…”