Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. FLETCHER. Madam Speaker, in my beloved home State of Texas, we are in a crisis, a healthcare crisis, a humanitarian crisis.

Since last September, access to abortion has been severely limited. Since last month, it has been eliminated.

In response, Texans who can do so have been traveling out of State to obtain abortion care, first to Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico. As some of these States have banned abortion, they are now traveling even farther.

Now, in response to this exercise of their constitutional right to travel between the States, lawmakers in Texas and in other States across the country are threatening to take away that right, too.

This is not hypothetical, it is not hyperbole, and it is nothing like what we just heard from the minority in response to this bill.

Just last week, a group of lawmakers in Texas publicized a letter that they sent to at least one law firm in Texas threatening the firm and each of its partners with felony criminal prosecution and disbarment because of the firm's policy to reimburse employees for travel costs associated with out-of-State travel for abortion care.

It is not just Texas. Lawmakers in Missouri have already considered legislation to prohibit its residents from traveling outside of the State for abortion care to States where it is legal, and groups are working on model legislation to introduce in States across the country as we speak.

Not only do these threats fail to reflect the will of the majority of people in this country who favor a legislative framework that takes into account the complex circumstances of pregnancy that we have discussed this morning, these threats fail to reflect the fundamental rights guaranteed in our Constitution.

Congress has the authority and the responsibility to protect people from these unconstitutional efforts to prevent, restrict, impede, or otherwise punish a person traveling to another State to obtain a legal abortion and to protect those providers and others who are helping them.

This morning, we are doing exactly that in passing the Ensuring Women's Right to Reproductive Freedom Act.

I thank the chairman, the Speaker, original cosponsors Representative Strickland and Representative Raskin, and all of our cosponsors for, once again, responding with urgency to the cruel efforts to deprive my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans of their constitutional right to travel by bringing this bill to the floor today, and I urge everyone in this body to vote ``yes.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source