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

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I join my colleagues this afternoon who come to the floor and speak about the introduction of the Women's Health Protection Act and codifying access to reproductive freedom for women in America.

It has been a little over 8 months since a radical Supreme Court overturned the 50-year-old landmark ruling guaranteeing the right to privacy and the right to obtain an abortion.

I want to take this time to highlight the impacts that this decision has had, not just on our country but even in my State, in the State of Washington.

We in Washington voted in 1991 to codify abortion as a legal right. We did that by a vote of the people. But we still need to worry about this issue because the problems that are causing the erosion of abortion rights in some parts of the United States are even causing hardship in our State.

Abortion clinics in Washington are facing rising caseloads and rising costs. Planned Parenthood in Spokane reported that in January, their clinics saw a 75-percent increase in the number of Idaho patients who were traveling across the line to get abortions. Physicians are rightly concerned that they could be arrested or sued for providing reproductive care to patients from abortion-restrictive States.

Pregnant women have it worst of all. If they go to a reproductive clinic for whatever reason, they can face a gauntlet of protesters. Yes, there are protesters right outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in Spokane. They are trying to set up fake clinics with fake names to divert women into their facilities instead of the actual care that they need.

I will note that it wasn't that long ago--just a few years ago--that the Planned Parenthood clinic was bombed in Whitman County, just south of Spokane. So these issues are a problem.

We even have had healthcare officials tell us that Washingtonians trying to get access to the morning-after pill had to go to four different pharmacies, only to find that it was not available. This drug has been an FDA-approved drug for decades, but all of a sudden, in Washington, it is not available.

Since this ruling was released last summer, 24 States have enacted near-total bans or stringent restrictions on the ability to get an abortion. People are still getting pregnant, and they are coming to Washington to exercise that opportunity, and we want to make sure we have a healthcare system that can deliver.

You know, employers are starting to avoid these abortion-restrictive States. I don't know if someone has thought through this issue. But I recently spoke to the cofounder of a very successful aviation company that just had one of the best demonstrations of the future of aviation. They are building a new facility, and he told me point blank he won't even consider locating in a State that doesn't provide reproductive freedom. He said he couldn't imagine having to ask an employee, who was enjoying that right in the State they live in now, to transfer to a State where that freedom was lost. He said it is absurd.

We know that people are aggressively trying to restrict access to abortion. They are aggressively pursuing even more anti-choice policies, such as restricting the use of the FDA-approved abortion drug even though 5.6 million patients in the United States have used that drug successfully since the year 2000.

It is plain to see that they are not going to stop, and that is why we are introducing this legislation and continuing the fight and awareness for reproductive health for women in the United States of America. We must put an end to these practices by passing the Women's Health Protection Act, which would make this a decision left up to women and their families and allow the future to be decided by them and not the interference of our government.

Madam President, I know you know--because you have been a law enforcement officer in the State you represent--you know the challenges of having individuals' privacies protected. This now is up to us to make sure we are protecting these rights and protecting women's access to reproductive freedom.

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