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Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, yesterday, I chaired a hearing focused on driving home the devastating repercussions of the healthcare crisis Republicans caused by overturning Roe and ending the right to abortion.

At that hearing, doctors and patients and experts spoke directly to the chaos and harm Republicans are causing. Tens of millions of women across the country now live in States where abortion has been banned or is likely to be banned soon.

Republicans have ripped away every woman's ability to decide for herself whether or not to keep a pregnancy. And it forced them to be pregnant when they do not want to be. Republicans are denying women control over their own bodies, endangering their health and putting patients and providers in impossible, indefensible situations: doctors unsure if they can save their patients without being punished; pharmacists unsure if they can fulfill a prescription; people unsure if they will be able to get Plan B, unsure if they will be able to use IVF to start a family and afraid they could get reported or investigated or even arrested for having a miscarriage.

And so many women forced to travel across State lines to get the reproductive care they need. People forced to drive miles and miles just to get the care that could save their lives. Good God, this should be unthinkable. But as we saw at yesterday's hearing, that is exactly the sort of oppressive regime, exactly the sort of nightmare reality Republicans have chosen to champion.

My colleague, the junior Senator from Kansas, actually said the fall of Roe was ``a positive development.'' Leader McConnell even called it a ``gigantic leap forward.'' My colleagues really think the devastation, the harm playing out across this country is positive? That is despicable.

Of course, another thing we saw at that hearing is that Republicans will do anything they can to change the subject from the damage that we will see, to ignore the reality of how deadly their policies are.

News flash: When you force someone to be pregnant, they are going to notice; they are going to remember; and they are going to be painfully aware of the difference between their personal decision and the reality Republican politicians are forcing on them.

And the horrifying thing is Republicans aren't just trying to mislead about the real impact of this cruel agenda, they are pushing for a national abortion ban. And Republican lawmakers have already set their sights on ripping away the right to travel.

Let's be really clear what that means. They want to hold women captive in their own States. They want to punish women and anyone who might help them for exercising their constitutional right to travel within our country to get the services that they need in another State.

I hope everyone really absorbs how extreme and how radical and how un-American that is.

I mean, just imagine what bans like that would mean for people. In my home State of Washington, the city of Clarkston is separated from Lewiston, ID, by a river--just a bridge, that is it. People cross that bridge every single day, without a second thought. And they cross State borders just like it every day, by the millions.

Surely, we can all agree that crossing that bridge, crossing any State border to go to the doctor and get healthcare you need should not be a crime. Surely, that is common sense. Surely, every Republican who has railed against Big Government could agree with me about that.

I will be honest, based on the shameless hypocrisy I have seen this week, I doubt it. But we are about to find out because we are about to request we pass a bill that my colleague from Nevada, along with Senator Gillibrand, Senator Whitehouse, and I, introduced on Tuesday, the Freedom to Travel for Healthcare Act. It is telling that some Republicans are already saying that this is a solution in search of a problem.

Well, let's be clear about the problem because it is real and it is imminent. Conservative legal organizations are right now drafting legislation to ban travel for abortion. It was discussed at two anti- abortion conferences already.

Republican Texas legislators are saying out loud they are working with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers to draft bills restricting travel modeled after their barbaric, vigilante abortion ban. And there is already legislation introduced in Missouri to ban abortion travel. Anyone telling you this is not a threat is not paying attention or they are just trying to mislead you.

So there is a problem. Now, here is the solution. What this bill does is simple, it protects every American's constitutional right to travel across State lines and to travel in order to get or provide a lawful abortion.

It prevents States from restricting or impeding Americans' right to travel to access care and ensures there is legal recourse if States attempt to restrict that right.

And it protects healthcare providers who are licensed to provide abortions in the States where they are practicing. This should not be controversial. We should all agree, Americans have a right to travel within the United States and get the reproductive care they need.

So I urge my colleagues to support this proposal and to work with us to make sure that Americans get access to the healthcare they need where they need it.

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