Disapproving the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I rise today to express my strong support for the Women's Health Protection Act, to restore abortion access to women all across our country.

Now, I first want to address what the Court did in Dobbs, a truly astonishing and tragic decision. What the Court did is, for the first time, take away a constitutional right--in this case, a right that women had enjoyed to make their own decisions about reproductive choice, something that the Court had enshrined in Roe v. Wade.

The whole history of making a more perfect Union in this country has been about expanding that we all are created equal, that we all have rights under the law that will be protected. And the Supreme Court, in the Dobbs decision, reversed that, where the Court played this destructive role of taking away the constitutional right that our women in this country have enjoyed.

The reasoning in that case, referred to by Justice Thomas, suggested that if there wasn't a right that was enumerated very specifically in the Constitution at the time it was written, then that right cannot be protected. It really implies, according to that reasoning, that interracial marriage could be struck down, that contraception should be struck down.

So the decision that the Court made in Dobbs and the reasoning in Dobbs is a real threat to the privacy rights that each and every American enjoys to make decisions about their own autonomy.

We have reacted around the country, with some States stepping up to protect abortion rights and other States enacting significant abortion restrictions. So what has happened with the Court decision in Dobbs is that we have created this immense division. For 50 years, all the women in this country had a right to make their decision and respect the decision that another woman made. That might be to terminate a pregnancy; it might be to take that pregnancy to term. But that was an individual decision that the individual woman had to make herself, in consultation with whomever it is she chose to consult.

It created the opportunity for unity and for acceptance by respecting the individual nature of that decision and the individual right of that person affected to make that decision, not to have a decision made, as Senator Klobuchar mentioned, by politicians.

Now, in Vermont, we voted across the State to constitutionally protect the right of a woman to make her own decision. So we enjoy, in Vermont, on a bipartisan basis--something that was supported by our Republican Governor as well as all our constitutional officers--we have protected the right of a woman to choose.

When I talk to Vermont women, as happy as they are that Vermont stepped up to protect their right to make their decision, they believe, as I do, that any woman's right should not be based on the ZIP Code they live in. It should be universal.

The Women's Health Protection Act makes it the right of every woman in every ZIP Code to make her own personal decision. By the way, that creates unity because it is not telling a person what decision they should make; it is accepting their right to make the decision and respecting the decision they make.

Now, women have been the leaders in this--and rightly so--because the women in this country have been most affected, but men have a very big responsibility to stand up in solidarity with our women, who have a right to protect their own bodily autonomy and to make their decision.

What we have seen with this patchwork of laws is not just confusion but peril and anxiety. It is peril and anxiety for a woman who may run afoul of that State law made by politicians. It has also created enormous uncertainty and anxiety for our providers who have to navigate whether the decision they have to make about providing a service is legal, and whatever decision they make can be challenged by some citizen seeking a bounty to hold that person to account for essentially stepping forward and providing services to a woman that they are entitled to receive.

So the Women's Health Protection Act is absolutely essential--both to protect the individual right of that woman to make her own decision, and it is also essential for us to create unity rather than division on something that is so essential, so personal, and so important.

So, along with my colleagues who are speaking on behalf of this legislation today, I urge all of our colleagues in the Senate to support this bill and protect and preserve the right of women in this country to make the decision that they deem best for them.

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