Bill Lee: “I am very pleased to offer this amendment with my colleagues, two great women, Representative Jan Schakowsky and…”

“I am very pleased to offer this amendment with my colleagues, two great women, Representative Jan Schakowsky and Representative Yvette Clarke. Our amendment is very simple. It would strike a provision in this bill that applies to any policy riders included in the annual Labor, Health and Human Services and Agricultural appropriations bills to the new National Institutes of Health funds and the Federal Drug Administration funds included in H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act. This provision reiterates the current law restrictions on appropriations bills, like the Hyde amendment, which is restrictive and discriminatory against low-income women to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions. Now this would apply to this new fund created for the NIH in this bill. Let's be clear what this is really about. It is yet another attempt to insert abortion restrictions and other inappropriate riders into an unrelated bill. This is a bill to increase biomedical innovative research. The 21st Century Cures Act should have been a noncontroversial, bipartisan effort. But anti-choice leaders could not help but add this to the bill after--mind you, after--it had passed out of committee on a bipartisan vote. It is really outrageous and part of a larger effort to force the inclusion of these harmful Hyde restrictions in multiple and unrelated bills. We know that these dangerous policies disproportionately affect low- income women and women of color.…”