Tax Convention with Chile

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, 1 year ago, Americans lost a constitutional right for the first time in history, and they didn't just lose it--Republicans ripped it away.

Just 1 year now after the Dobbs decision, more than 22 million women have lost their right to an abortion, and no corner of our country has been spared from the fallout. Abortion providers in States where abortion is legal, like in my home State of Washington, are being overworked and just totally overwhelmed with patients who have had to wait weeks and travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion.

Then there is the wave of other appalling Republican attacks on abortion: proposals to charge grandmas and older sisters with human trafficking if they drive a minor out of State for an abortion, prosecute abortion providers--doctors--as criminals, ban emergency contraceptives like Plan B, and let's not forget the partisan lawsuit on mifepristone to rip safe medication abortion off the shelves in all 50 States.

You know, when you listen to patients about what this all means and when you hear the actual stories--the nightmares--that Republicans are putting women in this country through, they are heartbreaking: parents driving miles and miles because their child was raped, their child is pregnant, and abortion is banned in their State; doctors being forced to forgo providing lifesaving care because they fear Republican politicians will put them in jail for doing their jobs; women facing miscarriages, left bleeding, unable to get the care they need for days on end.

One woman learned that her fetus had no skull--had no chance of survival--and she still could not get abortion care in her State.

Another woman learned that she had an ectopic pregnancy--a serious, life-threatening condition. She was not able to get an abortion. Instead, when she was at death's door, she ended up having to get a hysterectomy. Why? Because Republican politicians decided that their views mattered more than her health and mattered more than her family.

Let's be clear. The vast, overwhelming majority of Americans stand with women and support the right to choose abortion. In every place abortion rights were on the ballot last November--every single place-- abortion rights won. Still, the Republicans are ignoring their own constituents and doubling down on their extreme anti-abortion politics.

Just now, when we tried to pass other basic protections--and I mean the most simple, most straightforward protections imaginable, protections that just say, yes, you can travel to another State for an abortion; that, yes, doctors can provide an abortion in States where it is legal without fear of being thrown into prison; that, yes, we will protect the right to birth control; that, yes, we will keep your online health and location data private so it cannot be used against you--the Republicans said: No, we are not going to let you do that.

One Senator on the floor earlier said that legislation that restricts a woman's right to travel is really about protecting minors from trafficking. Seriously? That is outrageous, and I was absolutely--and I mean absolutely--outraged to hear him say that. I hope that the American people understand what those laws mean.

What it means is that a grandmother who is taking her 17-year-old granddaughter--who was raped or who, maybe, just wants to make her own personal healthcare decision--to a State where abortion is legal could be jailed. States like Idaho have passed these laws that restrict travel. What they do is hold the young women captive in their own State and threaten anyone who might help them get the care they need with time in prison. Those kinds of laws and proposals in other States are an appalling attack on the rights of women and our most basic right as Americans to travel freely within our own country.

I absolutely refuse to let a Senator or anyone twist the reality of these truly heinous laws being passed to hold women captive and to force them to stay pregnant no matter what.

Now, Republicans have basically adopted two approaches to the healthcare crisis they have caused: one, to double down with increasingly extreme, dangerous proposals or, two, to stick their heads in the sand whether that means pretending this isn't a problem, pretending it is not really their fault, or hoping it will fade away.

But there is just no forgetting the unforgivable pain the Republicans' policies have caused.

There is no forgetting the fear of being pregnant when you don't want to be or the heartbreak of learning a pregnancy is not viable or the horror of learning it is life-threatening and knowing you have no control over your body.

There is no forgetting the panic of calculating how many thousands of miles you will have to travel to get care or how many days you will have to take off of work and wonder how you can possibly get the care you need and whether you will face legal action for doing so.

There is no forgetting being investigated for having a miscarriage or for driving your kid across State lines to get an abortion or hearing your doctor tell you they cannot act to save your life because they are afraid of going to jail.

People across this country are facing those realities every single day.

Women are heartbroken and terrified, but they are also mad. They are determined, and they are speaking out. They are not going to settle for a country where they don't have the fundamental freedom to decide what happens to their own bodies--where their daughters and granddaughters have fewer rights than they did just a few years ago--and neither am I.

We on the Democratic side are going to stand up and tell our stories. We are going to make our voices heard, and we are going to fight here, on this side, to restore the freedoms that Republicans took away.

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