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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, it is little wonder that the Senator from Kentucky is praising the Supreme Court. More than any other Member of the U.S. Senate, he has been instrumental in choosing the members of this Court and has gone to lengths unseen in the history of the U.S. Senate to reach that goal.

Remember Merrick Garland, the nominee of President Barack Obama, whom this Senate leader, the Senator from Kentucky, refused to meet with or even consider for his nomination for almost a year? That is right--he kept a vacancy on the Supreme Court for more than 8 months so that he could perhaps see his prayers answered and a Republican President be elected.

Well, it happened. Donald Trump won. Merrick Garland had no chance to even be considered. Barack Obama was denied the authority given to him as President during his last year of his term, and the Senator from Kentucky waited patiently until he could bring to the Court Justice Gorsuch, a conservative to his liking.

That wasn't the end of his effort to make the Supreme Court what he wanted it to be. At the end of the Trump term, there was another vacancy on the Court with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and at that point, the Senator from Kentucky decided to break the rules in the opposite direction. It wasn't a slowdown this time in filling the vacancy; it was an acceleration, a speedup. In that instance, they broke most of the precedents in the Senate in terms of considering Supreme Court nominees for Amy Coney Barrett. So President Trump was able, thanks to the complicity of the Senator from Kentucky, to appoint three members of the Supreme Court.

The rulings in the last several weeks are just what the Senator from Kentucky and others have prayed for: a reversal of the rights of American families across the board. Basically, the right to access to reproductive freedom for women in this country was attacked in a way that few thought would ever happen, and now we are living with the consequences.

The Senator from Kentucky just said Democrats are trying to change the subject. I am not changing the subject. There will be a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow on this decision by the Supreme Court on overturning Roe v. Wade.

I want to say it is interesting that when the Senator from Kentucky is looking for moral and academic support, he turns to an unheard-of professor from Yale to quote. He uses that professor as a source to say: Don't worry. Just because we took away the freedom of women when it comes to their reproductive health, we are not going to go so far as to address any decisions on contraception, family planning, and the like.

Well, I might recommend to the Senator from Kentucky that he read the decision in Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade and the concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas, which said specifically that very thing. Now, he said, that we have done Roe v. Wade, it is time to look at cases that address the issue of privacy, the issue of same-sex marriage, and the issues of contraception, explicitly using those words.

So to suggest that some Yale professor should be trusted more than this Justice on the Court who has given us fair warning is hard to understand.

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