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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I rise with my colleagues today to continue to fight for women in every part of our country to once again be able to make their own healthcare decisions because ever since Republicans succeeded in their decades-long effort to overturn Roe v. Wade and drag our country back a half a century and rip away the right to abortion for women across the country, we have heard one horror story after another: women left suffering, waiting for the care that they need; doctors worried that they could face jail time for doing what is best for their patients; abortion providers who are overwhelmed by patients who are having to wait weeks for limited appointments and travel hundreds of miles for care.

Republicans have ushered in a crisis. It is a nightmare for women, for patients, and for doctors alike. And make no mistake, it is a choice extreme Republicans have made.

They fought for decades to overturn Roe. They passed the dangerous abortion bans that are causing this pain for women and families, and they are choosing to continue their nonstop efforts to strip women of control over their own bodies. Every day, extreme Republican politicians come out with some new awful idea to make women's lives worse.

Here in Congress, Senate Republicans introduced a national abortion ban last year. This Congress, one of the first bills the Republican House voted on was a Federal abortion ban. In just the few months since Roe was overturned, extreme abortion bans have gone into effect in 14 of our States, stripping over 20 million women of reproductive age of the ability to get abortion care in their own State.

And, by the way, transgender and nonbinary patients who already face so many challenges getting the healthcare they need in this country are being harmed by these bans as well. We are talking about truly cruel bans that set bounties for information about anyone who gets an abortion or helps provide one and bans that even lack exceptions for rape or incest or the life and well-being of the mom.

Republican bans have tripled the average travel time for patients to get the abortion care they need since Roe was overturned. And they have been especially challenging for communities that already face barriers for the care they need: patients with tight budgets who cannot afford to pay for travel and lodging hundreds of miles away from where they live; Black women who already suffer much higher maternal mortality rates; patients in rural and Tribal areas who aren't close to providers to begin with; and patients with disabilities, to just name a few.

Now they are going further, seeking to pass new bans to try to get around State court rulings and laws to get around the fact that their own constituents backed the right to abortion in statewide votes just last year. When extreme Republicans can't convince the American people to get on board with their extreme agenda, they have shown that they will try to force it on women across the country with threats and intimidation and outrageous lawsuits.

Extreme Republican attorneys general, for example, are suing the Biden administration because they told pharmacists they can't discriminate against pregnant patients and because they made it clear when a woman's life is at stake, doctors are required to provide lifesaving abortion care. And, of course, there is the extreme Republican lawsuit that seeks to take away an important abortion medication for patients nationwide--nationwide--effectively creating a nationwide ban on the most common way patients get an abortion. Twenty- two Republican attorneys general and, by the way, 67 Republicans right here in Congress have filed a brief supporting that lawsuit, supporting overriding experts at FDA to take a safe, effective abortion medication away from women nationwide, to take it away from my constituents in Washington State.

People across the country have already made it crystal clear they will not stand for Republicans' extreme agenda. In fact, last November, abortion rights won in every single place they were on the ballot-- every single place they were on the ballot.

Democrats won't stand for Republican attacks either. We are committed right here to being a firewall in the Senate against the House Republicans' extreme attacks on abortion. We refuse to accept a future where our daughters and granddaughters have fewer rights than we did.

We refuse to accept that any patient's right to control their own body depends on a State that they live in or the money in their bank account. That is why today Democrats are reintroducing the Women's Health Protection Act because the Dobbs decision was not the beginning of this fight, and it was not the end--far from it. We have to restore Roe for women in every corner of our country, and that is exactly what this bill does. It follows the Constitution and nearly half a century of precedent and gives patients the right to get an abortion and doctors the right to provide that care no matter where they are in America.

Some Republicans want us to just get used to women being forced to stay pregnant, no matter their circumstance, no matter what it means for their health or their family or their hope for the future. Some Republicans are hoping that this will all become normal.

Well, I have got news for them. Never, never will that happen. We will not be quiet. We will not give up. We are going to keep coming back as many times as it takes to end this chaos and return control of women's bodies to women. I promise, every single time we have to come back to this floor to lay bare the horrors of these extreme abortion bans they are inflicting on women and patients in this country, we will get louder.

So I urge all my Republican colleagues, start listening to the American people, start acknowledging the pain that these abortion bans are causing. Let's pass this critical bill to make things right.

I can't say that I expect them to listen to us, but I can guarantee you, if they don't, we will be back.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source