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Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I want to start by saying a very special thank-you to Senator Butler for calling us here today.

Today should have been the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade; instead, too many people can't get the medical care they need when they need it, where they need it. Students who are desperate for help get the runaround. Poor women face impossible hurdles. Children who have survived rape and become pregnant are frightened and confused. Fertility clinics are abandoning services, and families who hoped for a baby face excruciating heartache when a pregnancy goes wrong and doctors are barred from helping. At every turn, we see a new form of hell brought to us by an extremist Supreme Court and a powerful band of Republican lawmakers determined to obliterate reproductive freedom across the country.

To every person watching these events unfold and feeling hurt, I see you, I am with you, and I grieve alongside you.

But I do more than grieve, more than complain; I fight back, and I am asking you to fight back too because, right now, this is our moment to act and, if we don't, we might not get another opportunity for a long, long time.

Roe wasn't overturned by some accident. We are here because Republican extremists have been waging a decades-long war to take down Roe. They have poured billions of dark money into our politics to chip away at our rights. They handpicked judges with proven anti-abortion records. They took over State and local governments. They built an anti-Roe coalition right here in Congress. And the very second--the very second--that the Supreme Court gave them the green light, they jumped into action enacting the most severe restrictions possible on abortion access.

The result: Over the last year and a half, over 20 States have banned or severely restricted abortion access; passed laws criminalizing doctors who perform abortions; or threatened access to pregnancy care, miscarriage care, fertility assistance, and more.

Well-organized and well-funded extremists have brought lawsuits to further restrict access, hoping to undermine access in States that are firmly pro-choice. The result has been cruel and frightening. Some people have given in to despair, but I don't see it that way.

To me, the end of Roe marked a new era in the movement for abortion rights. Yes, an era that has been harrowing for people across the country, but also one that marks the end of a plan Republicans hatched 40 years ago to reverse Roe and the beginning of a new chapter. And in this new chapter, we are leading the way.

Together, we have made clear that an overwhelming majority of Americans support reproductive freedom and individuals' rights to make decisions about their own bodies. Across this country, millions of Americans have come together and said they are with us. Not just in places like California and New York, but in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio.

The Biden-Harris administration has stepped up to vigorously protect reproductive freedom from defending medication abortion from baseless lawsuits to preserving access to care for servicemembers and veterans to strengthening protection for patients' sensitive health information.

Republicans know that the majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe, but they aren't letting up. Instead, overturning Roe is not enough for them; they want more. They have introduced legislation to ban abortion nationwide, and if they can't pass it through Congress, they will use a Republican President to dust off a 19th century anti- obscenity law, instead, to try to get the job done.

We cannot let that happen. We have the energy; we have the numbers; and we know what we need to do. President Biden has called on Congress to act. We need to pass the Women's Health Protection Act to protect our human rights and to roll back the extreme abortion bills that radical rightwing legislatures have enacted across this country, and we need to get in the fight right now to secure the Congress that we need to get this job done.

This won't be easy, but important fights never are. I know our strength; I have seen it in the millions of people marching in the streets for abortion rights. I have seen it in the thousands of calls made to Congressional offices. I have seen it in the resolve of people standing up for Kate Cox in Texas and Brittany Watts in Ohio. And that is how I know that even when it gets hard, we will persist.

From this moment on, what happens is up to us. Together we have the power to restore Roe and to protect our right to make our own decisions about our own bodies and our own futures. I am in this fight all the way. The stakes are too high not to be.

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