Tom Coburn: “Mr. Speaker, in spite of what the Members of this body might think, the intention of this motion to instruct was not to…”

“Mr. Speaker, in spite of what the Members of this body might think, the intention of this motion to instruct was not to create havoc in the process as we attempt to go home. I want to describe my medical practice to all of my colleagues for a minute so they have a perspective. I just heard the 'white, middle-class' statement; and I think it is very important. Most of my patients are minorities. Most of them only have one parent. And let me tell my colleagues, every one of those parents want to know what is going on with their kids in school. And the assumption, the racial implication that if they happen to be a single mom and they have a child that gets in trouble that they do not want to know as much as everybody else is absurd and wrong and implies an absolute lack of knowledge about what is going on in this country with that valuable segment of our population. So I want to set that aside. The other thing is I want to tell my colleagues a story, one of the reasons I offered this amendment. I was in a town hall meeting in the southeast portion of my district. A 38-year-old father came in, and I have never seen anybody so mad in my life. I was the object of his rage, because his 12-year-old daughter had just shown him what she had been given at a clinic, 12 years old, no knowledge. She was given Preven. In case she needed it at some future time, she was given a bag of condoms. She was given noxonol nine.”