Equal Representation Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MANNING. Mr. Speaker, I thank my cousin, Representative Raskin, for yielding me time.

We have wasted another legislative week on ludicrous messaging bills to defend the liberty of laundry and freedom for the fridge. Today, they are pushing a bill to upend our Nation's process for collecting Census data.

Let's be clear. The so-called Equal Representation Act does nothing to live up to its name. In fact, their bill would result in the opposite. It will reduce participation in the Census, which our government relies on for a host of data to inform our decisionmaking.

What is more, this bill will violate our Constitution, which states that all persons be counted in the Census. Instead of wasting time on deeply unserious messaging bills, Congress should be focused on what really matters to the American people, particularly reproductive freedoms.

Right now, across the country, women are suffering from extreme abortion bans that are endangering their health and limiting their ability to make private medical decisions. Women in America are worried about their reproductive freedoms and deeply concerned about what extremist politicians will attack next. We know that radical judges and politicians are not stopping with abortion bans. They are now attacking fertility treatments and attempting to restrict birth control methods like plan B and IUDs.

If far-right extremists really cared about women, they would want to make the full range of birth control readily available, not restrict access to it.

This Sunday is Mother's Day. How about giving moms and potential moms the gift they really want: the right to decide whether, when, and with whom to have children. Instead of flowers, let's guarantee the right to use the full range of FDA-approved birth control.

In honor of Mother's Day and for this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill.

My amendment would strike the text of H.R. 7190 and replace it with my Right to Contraception Act, a bill to protect the right to access all forms of FDA-approved birth control and protect women's reproductive health from political interference.

For full text, please see H.R. 4121.

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Ms. MANNING. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

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