# Sandra Fluke testimony entered in Congressional Record by Senator Barbara Boxer

Source: 2012 Congressional Record, Vol. 158, Page S1135 , see also text based version.
Sandra Fluke testimony entered in Congressional Record by Senator Barbara Boxer
HON. BARBARA BOXER
OF CALIFORNIA IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE
February 29, 2012
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the testimony of a woman who tried very hard to be allowed to speak with a panel of men at a congressional hearing.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, this is a panel of men who were called by House Republican Chairman Issa to testify about women's health--not one woman there, but they were the experts. They denied this woman the chance to speak. If she had been allowed to speak, this is what she wanted to say:
She had a friend who went to the doctor, and the friend had a cyst on her ovary. The doctor said: You have to take birth control. That is going to help. Those pills are going to help reduce the size of that cyst.
She couldn't afford the birth control pills and her employer wouldn't cover them, so she couldn't take them. She is a student. She wrote her friend saying that the cyst "was so painful, I woke up thinking I'd been shot."
I will quote part of the friend's testimony relaying what her friend told her.
And so her friend says:
So when we talk about the Blunt amendment, we are not talking about some obtuse issue, we are not talking about some philosophical issue. What we are talking about when we talk about the Blunt amendment is a young woman, a student at law school who couldn't afford to pay for the birth control pills which would have saved her fertility, which would have saved her horrific pain--a painful operation where she lost her ovary simply because she couldn't have access to her birth control pills.
This is not about some argument that doesn't have real consequences for our people. The Presiding Officer's constituents and my constituents deserve to have access to preventive care. They deserve to have access to essential health care. The Blunt amendment will take that away from them. It will take that away from them. And all on a highway bill. All on a highway bill.
So let's keep the Blunt amendment away from this highway bill. This highway bill is a product of strong bipartisanship, as the Presiding Officer has told the Senate. Let's keep it clean. Let's keep out these extraneous amendments that will roll back environmental laws that are cleaning up the air, that will keep the arsenic and the mercury out of the air and the lead out of the air. Let's not roll back these laws on a highway bill. Let's get the highway bill done. When we have other arguments about other issues, let's put those issues on a relevant bill.
This is the time now for us to pull together, not pull apart. The Nation needs us to work together. It is an election year, and it is a difficult time. There is a lot of name-calling going on out there on the campaign trail, but we are still here, last I checked, and we are supposed to be doing our work for the American people. We have a chance to do it on this highway bill. Let's defeat the Blunt amendment in the morning.
I thank my friends for coming over to the floor and speaking so eloquently today against this dangerous, precedent-setting Blunt amendment that will turn back the clock on women's health and on our families' health.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum. ____________________
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
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