The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 5276” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S7816-S7817 on Dec. 20.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 5276
Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 5276 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Mississippi.
Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Madam President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Illinois.
Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, my daughter Abigail, my oldest daughter, just turned 8. She is silly and smart and gives the best hugs you could ever imagine. She has big dreams, and if you have ever met her, you just know that she will reach them. She has decided that one day she is going to become an engineer or an Army nurse. She wants to build things, and she wants to help people. That is it.
My younger daughter, Maile Pearl, is 4\1/2\, with just about the most contagious laugh I have ever heard.
My girls are my everything, and for them, I would do anything, but Abigail and Maile might never have been born if it were not for the basic reproductive rights Americans have been depending on for nearly half a century. I might never have had my beautiful, incredible, drive-
me-crazy, yet-I-love-them-infinitely girls if Roe v. Wade had not paved the way for women to make their own healthcare decisions, as I was only able to get pregnant through IVF, in vitro fertilization.
Because of IVF, I get to experience all the joys and chaos of motherhood. Because of IVF, my husband and I aren't just ``Tammy and Bryan''; we are ``Mommy and Daddy.'' Because of IVF, we are a family, and my heart is whole.
Tragically, that future--that family, that fervently hoped-for dream--is now in danger for millions of would-be parents across the country, as the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe has Republicans plotting to push forward new policy that would go even further toward controlling women's bodies, including plans that could effectively ban fertility treatments like IVF.
We know that because they told us, because they said the quiet part out loud. One anti-choice group even admitted to GOP legislators that they would consider figuring out how to go after IVF treatments ``next year, 2 years from now, 3 years from now.''
If you are thinking that this makes no sense, you are right. You are not misunderstanding anything. You are not missing something. It is the ultimate nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny that you think it is.
The very people who claim to be defending family values are actively shouldering policies that would prevent millions of Americans from starting families.
In the most extreme version, they are pushing the kind of so-called personhood bills that paint women undergoing IVF as criminals and our doctors as killers, even as we are trying everything we can to create life.
The thing is, they craft this kind of policy carefully, tactically. They are strategic about every word they use, about every comma they place, winking to their political base all the while.
Their so-called personhood bills don't necessarily say: Guess what, big news. We are going to ban IVF, full stop. What they say is: Hey, we're not completely, totally, fully opposed to IVF, per se. But we definitely won't let you implant multiple fertilized eggs at once. They say: You can have this expensive, intensive procedure still, but you can only implant one embryo at a time--a cruelly clever way of effectively preventing people from trying IVF without actually spelling it out verbatim.
The process relies on implanting multiple embryos at once to give women the best shot of becoming pregnant and carrying a child to term. So implanting only one per round would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention emotionally devastating for so many.
Personhood: This policy could also ban dilation and curettage, or D&C, after an incredibly short time, sometimes at just 6 weeks. D&C is the medical procedure necessary to safely remove an unviable embryo and lining of the uterus so women can eventually try again to get pregnant.
So what happens if a woman miscarries after that 6-week mark? What happens to women like me who miscarried at 9 weeks? If that kind of policy had been in place in that horrible, most searingly painful moment in my life when I learned that my pregnancy wasn't viable, I would have been kept from the medical care I desperately needed--care that allowed me to undergo another round of IVF after that D&C procedure was completed, care that allowed me eventually to get pregnant with my rainbow daughter, Maile.
Over the past 6 years that I have served in the Senate, I have gotten to know some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle quite well. Today, I come to the floor to ask those Republican colleagues a simple question: Think back to that stretch of time before you became a parent. Imagine that the only way you or your partner could get pregnant was through IVF. Then imagine that some politicians deciding that appealing to the most fringe subset of their base was worth robbing you of your dream of having a child, was worth stealing that moment we all had when we locked eyes with our newborns for the first time. How would that feel? How would that sit with you?
If it so happens that you didn't struggle with infertility, that you didn't need a little medical help to have your child, then I am happy for you, truly. I can't tell you how fortunate you are. But if through sheer luck you won that proverbial lottery, how could you then stomach spending your time robbing other Americans, your own constituents, of the joy you have been lucky enough to experience?
No. No. No. No.
In this scary, precarious post-Dobbs world, we cannot risk one more State getting one inch closer to stripping one more person of the right to build their family, how they choose, when they choose.
That is why today, I ask my colleagues to pass with unanimous consent my Right to Build Families Act, which would ensure that every American's fundamental right to become a parent via IVF is actually, truly protected, regardless of a person's ZIP Code.
My bill would keep States from banning assisted reproductive technology--known as ART--including IVF. It would protect healthcare providers who provide ART or related counseling and would allow the Department of Justice to pursue civil action against States that violate this legislation because no one should feel that someone else's religious beliefs or partisan slants could rob her of her chance to get pregnant, and no doctor should have to risk becoming a criminal in their State's eyes just for providing women the healthcare they need to start families.
Let's be very clear. If you believe in basic logic, then you know that there is no chance that these kinds of extremist Republicans have any right to call themselves pro-life.
If they were pro-life, they would do something about the number of first graders murdered in their classrooms by military-style assault weapons every year.
If they were pro-life, they would spend even an ounce of energy trying to staunch the maternal mortality crisis that has killed a tragic number of Black and Brown women.
If they cared about protecting life on this planet, they would do something about our planet dying. They would stop stripping basic healthcare from single parents working double shifts. They would stop trying to rip Social Security away from grandma and grandpa. If they cared about fostering life maybe--I don't know, maybe, just maybe--they wouldn't try to stop women like me from creating it. They wouldn't throw around words like manslaughter, when all we want is to become mothers.
Look, there are lots of really complicated, nuanced issues that we debate in this Chamber. This just isn't one of them.
One in four women married to men have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term, a stat that doesn't include the LGBTQ+ couples or partnerless Americans who also need the help of ART to grow families.
One in four--that is one in four blue States, one in four red States, battleground States, one in four of the biggest cities and the smallest of rural towns, one in four of the wealthiest and the poorest ZIP Codes.
Infertility doesn't discriminate. It doesn't distinguish. It doesn't see party lines or State lines.
So to my Republican colleagues, please: Think about how many women that 25 percent equates to be in your State, women willing to go through expensive, painful medical procedures just for a chance to experience the smallest, most banal moments of parenthood, just to have a newborn to swaddle, a toddler whose shoes to tie, a baby whose diaper to change.
Think about these constituents of yours. If you believe that they have the right to be called ``Mom'' without also being painted as a criminal, then all you have to do to prove it is to help me defend this most basic right. It is that simple. It is that easy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Minnesota.
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