Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as the minority leader explained, we unfortunately expect that today Senate Republicans will again make an effort to spread lies and misinformation about why some women decide to have abortions later in pregnancy, and they will do so instead of listening to women like Judy, from my home State of Washington, who learned that her son's organs were not developing properly--one lung was just 20 percent formed, and the other was missing entirely; women like Darla, from Texas, who learned that the complications one of her twins was facing could endanger the other's life as well; women like Alyson, a mother of six, who learned that one of her twins had died in the womb and the other was facing severe complications and that her own health was in severe risk from the pregnancy; or countless patients in States that have so severely undermined access to safe, legal abortion that women struggle to exercise their rights protected under our Constitution.

It is worth asking, with so much else going on, why are Republicans spending time doubling down on lies to undermine women's reproductive health? The unfortunate truth is that my Republican colleagues are not repeating these falsehoods because they are concerned about children or families; instead, they are doing whatever they think will help them reach their goal of taking away access to safe abortion in the United States of America.

Republicans may not be listening to women or doctors or families like the ones I just mentioned who had to make extremely difficult decisions, but Democrats are listening. We know women need to be able to make the healthcare choices that are right for them and their families, and healthcare providers need to be able to let medical standards, not politics, drive patients' care.

None of this should be controversial, and for the vast majority of people across the country, it is not. But as long as Republicans are holding partisan hearings to spread misinformation and lies or pushing anti-doctor, anti-women, and anti-family legislation or putting up new barriers to make it harder for women to access reproductive healthcare or trying to defund trusted healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood through harmful gag rules or jamming through far-right, ideological judges to chip away at Roe v. Wade, Democrats are not going to stop fighting back on behalf of women, men, and families in this country.

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