In the last two years, the amount of legislation in the House of Representatives and state legislatures has been really unprecedented, that has focused on reproductive rights.
The health care reform legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last night clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and infringes on each state's sovereignty.
I have been blessed, working both at the local level on a community school board, the state assembly, four years in the state senate, and now almost 12 years in the House of Representatives.
As the former state speaker of the North Caroline House of Representatives, I helped push two landmark bills that protected and expanded gun rights for citizens.
McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all.
Every proper exertion has been made and will be continued to carry out the wishes of Congress in relation to the tobacco trade, as indicated in the several resolutions of the House of Representatives and the legislation of the two branches.
We have in the last two years, we have passed 350 legislation in the parliament, most of which deal with democratization, human rights, and of course, economy.
Remember the vast majority of the Democrats as well as all the Republicans in the House of Representatives in Louisiana voted for my signature-piece of legislation in the house which was a bill, actually a bill for true civil rights. That there must be no discrimination against anyone on the basis of race in affirmative-action.
It's going to be very important that we as women's rights advocates are involved in redistricting of both the states legislatures and of the House of Representatives and that we not lose seats but we gain seats for talented women and our country, but we're lacking behind.
I was on the elections committee in my last session in the state House of Representatives.
In my twenties, I relied on Planned Parenthood as my health care provider - and throughout my time in the State House, I have fought for Mainers' reproductive rights.
The notion that Americans can be protected from "terror" by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. Democrats are complicit in this absurd notion. Many were intimidated into voting for police state legislation, because they lacked the intestinal fortitude to call police state legislation by its own name. The legislation that has been passed during the Bush regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim terrorists.
The House of Representatives was not designed to sit idly by and rubberstamp every piece of legislation sent their way by the Senate, especially legislation passed on a straight party line vote under the spurious policy of reconciliation.
I just want to remind people that the task of those who support reproductive rights and reproductive justice didn't change based on who is in the White House. We have leadership that is not supportive of what we're trying to do, but the demand for justice shouldn't be modulated.
There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.
There are two pieces of legislation that are related. There's the Communal Land Rights Bill. Then there is the legislation that was approved which has to do with the role and the place and the function of the institution of traditional leadership. Now that legislation, not the Communal Land Rights Bill, provides for the setting up of particular committees that would work together with the elected municipalities.
The gay rights movement of recent years has been an inspiring victory for humanity and it is in the tradition of the civil rights movement when I was a young boy in the South, the women's suffrage movement when my mother was a young woman in Tennessee, the abolition movement much farther back, and the anti-apartheid movement when I was in the House of Representatives. All of these movements have one thing in common: the opposition to progress was rooted in an outdated understanding of morality.