Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, while she is on the floor, I want to commend my northwest colleague and friend, Senator Murray, for all of her leadership, constantly coming to the floor and leading us on this enormous health challenge--a challenge that is really existential for so many women across the country.

Right now in State capitals across the land, Republican lawmakers are passing extreme bills that throw in the trash can 45 years of settled law on reproductive health. This is an open, coordinated attack on Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose the healthcare she needs. These Republican lawmakers are passing bills that are not only harmful, but they are overwhelmingly opposed by the public--bills with harsh criminal penalties for women and doctors, bills with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, bills that explicitly compare women getting medical care to the Holocaust. Let me repeat that--bills that explicitly compare women getting medical care to the Holocaust.

I want to be clear on what this is all about. The party of Donald Trump is insisting on government control of women's bodies. That is what is on the table in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and elsewhere-- government control of women's bodies.

Millions of women across the land are watching in anger and in fear as all of this is playing out. I have heard from many of them back home in Oregon. I heard it last weekend. I have four town meetings in the rural part of Oregon coming up; I am going to hear it again. Women are afraid for the future--their future and their family's future--because they know what is at stake with this coordinated attack on their rights.

First, it puts women's lives in danger.

The reality is, abortions will still happen in States that pass these laws, but those abortions will happen later, and they will be unsafe. Women are going to die. That is a fact. Women are going to die because of these restrictions. If you need proof, just look at the figures before and after the Roe case. In the decades before Roe, thousands of women died due to unsafe abortions. And those are only the ones people know about. That doesn't even take into consideration the unnamed, the unknown victims of those misguided policies. After Roe was decided in 1973, women's healthcare got safer. Now, once again, there is an effort to undermine that safety of women.

Second, in key ways, the future these restrictive laws are creating is worse for women and healthcare professionals than before Roe.

What we are talking about now is jailing doctors for life. We are talking about treating women like hardened criminals after they get a medical procedure. Women in some places are facing the prospect that they may need to report miscarriages to the government or they could wind up in prison.

The other side in this debate paints a picture of women exercising their right to choose that is unfair and unrealistic. These are incredibly difficult choices. Many women exercising the right to choose have just been hit with the most devastating medical news that prospective parents can face. It is not up to State lawmakers and government bureaucrats to step in and interfere with this intensely private and personal choice, but that is exactly what is on offer with the laws being passed in statehouses across the land. These laws bind and punish women with a level of government control that did not exist before Roe. This is right out of nightmarish fiction. It is a coordinated attack on women's rights that is cruel and dangerous.

Abortion and other reproductive decisions are healthcare, and healthcare choices ought to be made by women with the help of doctors they trust, not by the Federal Government and not by State lawmakers-- women and doctors. That is it. Full stop.

My Democratic colleagues and I want to thank Senator Murray and Senator Shaheen, who have been such advocates for women's healthcare for many years in public service. They are here.

We are all going to be part of this effort that I am proud to join in to fight at the Federal level with everything we have to stand up for women's right to make intensely personal choices, and we are going to be joining those women across the land who are standing up and fighting with everything they have.

The government should not have control of women's bodies--end of story.

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