Political Quotes

“in this body not a day goes by that we do not deify the military. Yet in this bill is a provision that would leave a woman stranded, while serving her country, without medical care, if the medical care she happens to need is a legal abortion. A compromise had been reached whereby she would have to pay 100 percent of the cost. Instead, in this bill, she would be left alone to go off base, perhaps in a foreign country and not speaking the language, to find that medical care. It is always wrong, Mr. Speaker, and it is always against the American tradition, to interfere with a fundamental right to privacy. It is particularly wrong to toss a member of the military to the winds in need of medical care, particularly when she may be in a foreign country. This is a fundamental right; it is not going to be withdrawn. So the strategy to humiliate people and make it difficult for them to be able to exercise the right is the prevailing strategy of this session. The exercise of this right is understandably painful to many who oppose the right. It is painful to me to see someone exercise their first amendment free speech rights when they are speaking words that I find painful. But in this country, we do not try to extinguish constitutional rights by making them difficult or impossible to exercise. We particularly must not operate that way when dealing with women who serve their country in the U.S. military.”