Reproductive Rights

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, now on over-the-counter birth control, as hard-right Republicans continue their all-out assault on reproductive rights, the American people just received some very big news: The first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill is headed to stores later this month.

The introduction of a safe, effective, over-the-counter birth control pill is a promising step toward improving access to contraception. The pill, Opill, will be available very soon at major stores and pharmacies and online, for anyone to buy without needing a prescription. It will be a new avenue for Americans to access reproductive care, so critical today as reproductive care comes under greater attack by the hard right.

Hard-right Republicans have shown they have no restraint when it comes to ripping away reproductive rights after the disastrous Dobbs decision. Whether it is pushing for a national abortion ban, as the hard right has been doing for decades; or blocking promotions of hundreds of military officers in protest of women in the military getting access to reproductive care, as one Republican Senator did repeatedly last year; or even threatening access to in vitro fertilization, as the Republican majority Alabama Supreme Court did, followed by Senate Republicans blocking legislation to protect IVF last week, Republicans have made it beyond clear they have not yielded one bit in their radical anti-women, anti-choice agenda.

That is why this historic announcement of an over-the-counter birth control pill is so important. It lands a blow against those who are trying so desperately to limit access to reproductive care.

Democrats, meanwhile, will continue fighting to make sure everyone who needs birth control can get it and to improve women's healthcare, women's access to healthcare, and the affordability of healthcare.
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