Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROKITA. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Indiana is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I rise in support of the Pence amendment. The time has come to end Federal funding of abortion. This is one of the worst misappropriations of funds in our Federal budget and it is unacceptable to most of the people--Republican, Democrat, liberal or conservative--in this country. Many taxpayers, including me, are sickened that their hard-earned tax dollars are put toward funding the nearly 1.3 million abortions in America every year. The minority party's demagoguery and demagoging language about some kind of war on women is nothing but laughable.

Plenty of family planning services outside of Planned Parenthood exist to help families seeking direction, care and counsel. Those actively sound places and services deserve a portion of funds to continue their much needed and well-respected services.

But our nation's largest provider of abortions isn't one of them. Under title X, Federal funds go directly to Planned Parenthood where the money ultimately funds abortion and this is one of the worst stipulations in current law. Again and again, Planned Parenthood has proven itself corrupt and misleading. No American who is against abortion should be required to help pay for it. And no American can seriously argue that the Federal Government isn't paying for abortion right now, when Planned Parenthood receives at least $360 million from the taxpayers each year while simultaneously performing more than 324,000 abortions.

Regarding the gentleman from New York's charge that we should be using a bill of attainder and challenging us to say otherwise, I take that challenge, as a person licensed to practice law in Indiana and licensed to practice before the United States Supreme Court. I would say that the bill of attainder, this amendment is not that.

The people of the Fourth District of the State of Indiana and their Representative have the right to produce an amendment to stop taxpayer funding of abortions, and we are doing that here tonight.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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