AOC: ‘This Legislation Will Kill Women, That Is Not a Hyperbole [Sic]’

Ocasio-Cortez: “We’ve been here since 2:00 yesterday, straight, no breaks, discussing everything from the energy provisions that are being gutted to, most importantly, healthcare that is on the chopping block. And for a lot of this discussion in the last almost 24 hours, some of the justification for these cuts have been about populations and people who are undeserving of Medicaid and healthcare, who are not worthy of it, who are fraudulent, et cetera. You know, the list goes on. But, you know, at the end of the day, it’s about who is not deserving of care. And I would like my colleagues to sit with the feeling of having this legislation come before us and imagine what it feels like as a woman to have healthcare and clinics that are dedicated to the full spectrum of women’s care be on the chopping block. Because the implication is that we are undeserving. The implication here is that Planned Parenthood is being defunded because women are undeserving of the full spectrum of care that can save their life. Because as the gentlelady from Virginia noted, in states that have banned, outlawed, restricted, defunded abortion services and care, women die at much higher rates. It kills women. It kills women to defund care, reproductive care. It kills women to restrict it, to ban it, to defund it. And this legislation will kill women. That is not a hyperbole. It is not a hyperbole. Pregnant women can enter complications really fast, really fast. And in many places, in many communities, a Planned Parenthood clinic is the closest, only, and most available place that a woman can go to for care. My own mother got prenatal care for me at a Planned Parenthood. All of her ultrasounds, all of her prenatal care was at a Planned Parenthood. And without a Planned Parenthood, I don’t know what kind of care she would have gotten. Women who are menopausal are getting hormone replacement therapy, helping ease an enormous amount of pain in their life, enormous amount of discomfort in their life. Young women are learning about the reproductive and birth control options that are available to them. People are figuring out what to do in terms of what to avail themselves. The point has been made many times that abortion is not the only service that’s provided by Planned Parenthood, but it is a critical one. Because in the event where a woman’s life is threatened and a DNC is the only option that you have to save her life, defunding a Planned Parenthood will take her life. And this provision that defunds Planned Parenthood is telling every woman in the country that you are part of an undeserving class, that you are part of waste, fraud, and abuse as a human being. And we do not believe that women are disposable in this country. We do not believe that our lives are disposable at all, whatsoever.”