{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://golden.house.gov/media/press-releases/golden-votes-no-on-bill-that-threatened-abortion-providers-with-prison-time", "Golden votes \u2018no\u2019 on bill that threatened abortion providers with prison time", "2025-01-23", "2025", "2025-01", "Democrat", "House", "ME", "Jared F. Golden", "G000592", "golden.house.gov", "golden", "https://golden.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2014 Congressman Jared Golden (ME-02) today voted \u201cno\u201d on HR 21, legislation to politicize women\u2019s health care, interfere with family-provider medical decisions and threaten doctors and nurses for providing life-saving legal reproductive health care.\n\n\u201cThis bill is not based in reality. It is a solution in search of a problem,\u201d Golden said. \u201cWhat\u2019s worse, it threatened to send medical professionals to prison for exercising their medical judgment, even to save a woman\u2019s life. This bill targets doctors and nurses providing care during one of the most complex and heartbreaking scenarios a pregnant woman could encounter: the choice of having to end care when life-threatening and dangerous complications arise in a pregnancy. The House should not be in the business of threatening doctors and nurses or substituting extreme anti-choice ideology for qualified medical decision-making.\u201d\n\nHR 21 would require medical practitioners to provide \u201cthe same degree of professional skill, care and diligence\u201d for a living child delivered during an attempted abortion \u2014 just as they would during normal childbirth. It threatened providers with stiff fines and up to five years in prison if they were found to have violated its myriad and untenable requirements.\n\nInfanticide is already illegal in the United States, and providers are already required to provide care in the extremely rare case that a child is born alive during an attempted abortion.\n\nWhen the House passed the bill last year, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called it \u201canother cruel and misguided attempt to interfere with evidence-based medical decision making between patients and their physicians. \u2026 Laws that ban or criminalize evidence-based care and rely on medically unsupported theories and misinformation are dangerous to families and their clinicians. This bill negatively affects all obstetric and gynecologic care.\u201d\n\nIn opposition to the bill, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote: \u201cThis bill imposes a rigid set of requirements on health care providers that entirely disregards providers\u2019 professional training and judgment, as well as patient preferences and established medical standards. \u2026 One provision is so vaguely worded that it is unclear what it actually requires of providers \u2014 and yet, these requirements are coupled with the threat of serious criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison, for those who do not comply. \u2026 H.R. 21 would substitute a physician\u2019s best judgment with that of politicians, interfering with physicians\u2019 ability to provide appropriate, compassionate, evidence- based care. It must be rejected.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T17:10:36Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://golden.house.gov/media/press-releases/golden-votes-no-on-bill-that-threatened-abortion-providers-with-prison-time"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8250649552792311, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}