Patty Murray: “here we go again. As we have done so many times in recent years, we are sacrificing serious and legitimate national…”

“here we go again. As we have done so many times in recent years, we are sacrificing serious and legitimate national interests to the partisan and divisive abortion debate. Due to the global gag rule imposed on international family planning, I will vote against the conference report on H.R. 1757, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. I commend the President for his strong veto message to the Congress on this legislation. Passage of this conference report will not change current law. A vote in favor of the conference report will not ultimately result in the payment of the U.S. debt to the United Nations or the reorganization of the State Department. Passage may score political points but it will delay this important legislation and diminish U.S. standing in the international community. This language is anything but a compromise as proponents of the new global gag rule claim in defending the conference report. It was not adopted nor debated on the Senate floor. Every single Democratic conferee to this legislation refused to sign the conference report. Labeling this language a compromise is misleading and untrue. Passage of the conference report will unfairly disqualify many family planning organizations from receiving U.S. international family planning funds if they use their own funds in their own countries to point out the adverse public health consequences of medically unsafe abortion.”