Reproductive Justice for Women

Floor Speech

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleagues, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, for hosting this week's Special Order hour on an issue that is so critically important to all people who want healthcare and need equitable access to reproductive healthcare and justice in the United States.

Right now, we are facing a critical juncture in the fight for healthcare and reproductive healthcare in the United States. Louisiana lawmakers designed a law to push abortion out of reach. It compounds the financial barriers of people struggling to make ends meet that they already face when seeking care, including the decades-old Hyde amendment that has long denied affordable abortion care for low-income people.

When I think about this issue and when any of us think about this issue, we bring our whole selves to the conversation. When I think about the issue of reproductive healthcare, I bring so much of my experience working in hospitality in restaurants.

Working in restaurants is a front line for sexual harassment and sexual assault. Working as a waitress, many of my colleagues were sexually harassed and sexually assaulted.

There were days when many of them did not have access to reproductive healthcare or even prenatal healthcare. One woman I know was pregnant and had no healthcare, and she had to show up at free clinics for hours at a hospital waiting for a new doctor every time.

Another friend of mine that I had worked with was in an abusive relationship, and, as we all know, reporting rape is a very different issue than accessing reproductive healthcare in time.

When we impose things like the Hyde amendment, what we say is that, if you are wealthy and have these conditions, you can have access to reproductive healthcare and an abortion, but, if you are poor, you will not be afforded those same issues. That is what the Hyde amendment is telling the American people and all people who are capable of being pregnant or know a person or are part of a family of someone who is pregnant.

It is incredibly important that we advance and uphold issues of economic and racial justice for all people, regardless of their income and regardless of who they are.

Right now, choice is the law of the land. That law should be extended to all people, and there is no reason--none--that a Democratic majority should uphold the Hyde amendment in the United States. We have to make sure that all people have access to reproductive justice and reproductive healthcare.

Last, but not least, these decisions--oftentimes heart-wrenching--are not decisions to be made between a constituent and a legislator. It is a decision to be made between a person and their doctor.

Nobody's healthcare should be up to a senator or their State representative to determine, no less, when so many of these bodies are not representative and do not contain in them people who can become pregnant.

People do not understand, so many of the people writing these laws do not understand the scope and the breadth that economic and reproductive justice entails; and, to that, we have to make sure that we eliminate the Hyde amendment and allow all people to have access to the reproductive justice and healthcare that they need.

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