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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I am so glad to come to the floor today to support my colleagues--the Presiding Officer, who is Senator Markey, and Senator Hirono--as you champion a great and necessary bill, the Right to Contraception Act. I am proud to stand with my colleagues, and I am so proud to support this bill.

You know, today should have been a day of celebration. It was the 105th anniversary of the Senate's passing the 19th Amendment--one of the greatest amendments ever passed--granting women the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution. That was truly a proud moment for this Chamber and one of the greatest victories ever in the march toward women's equality--a march that New York proudly advanced. Upstate New York was a hotbed for the women's suffrage movement, including in places like Seneca Falls.

But, on this 105th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's passage, we must confront the ugly truth that women, sadly, have fewer freedoms today than they did just a few years ago, because, a few weeks from now, America will observe a different anniversary, a much darker anniversary, that of the MAGA Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. Thanks to that decision and thanks to the hard right's war on women, reproductive freedoms are at their lowest point in modern history, and who knows how far the hard right will go. Two years ago, the MAGA Court eliminated the protections of Roe. Tomorrow, it could be something else. Maybe, it could be the Griswold decision that protected the right to use birth control.

To those who think that is outlandish or impossible to happen, just remember Clarence Thomas himself opened the door to this possibility in his concurring opinion on the day Roe was overturned. We are kidding ourselves if we think the hard right is satisfied with simply overturning Roe. And, for all those who say it can never happen, remember people said that before Dobbs--that Roe would never be overturned. Of course, unfortunately, it was by the rightwing MAGA Court, appointed by Donald Trump and our Republican colleagues here in the Senate.

So, tomorrow, the Senate will act. We will vote to move forward on the Right to Contraception Act. Supporting Federal protections for contraceptives should be the definition of what is a simple, commonsense, and easy choice. The bill we will vote on tomorrow simply says: If you want access to birth control or if your healthcare provider wants to prescribe birth control, the government has no right to interfere.

Doesn't that seem like common sense? After all, access to birth control is something that 90 percent of Americans support.

Of course, we are already hearing the same predictable, tired, and unpersuasive retorts from the other side: that this vote is somehow unnecessary; that birth control could never possibly be at risk; that this is much ado about nothing. That is simply not true.

To those who argue Federal protections for birth control are unnecessary, go ask the people of Virginia what they think after their Republican Governor vetoed a bill that would have protected contraceptives at the State level. Go ask the people of Nevada what they think after their Republican Governor also vetoed a bill to protect access to birth control. To those who say birth control will never fall at risk, go ask the people of Florida or Arizona or Idaho or Iowa or Missouri. In each of these States, Republican Governors or Republican State legislators are on record blocking protections for birth control access in some form or another.

It is unacceptable--simply unacceptable--for Americans to even question whether or not access to birth control should fall at risk, but that is precisely the worry one in five Americans has today. We can eliminate that worry in one fell swoop by passing the Right to Contraception Act.

I hope both sides join together to show strong support for this essential bill tomorrow when we vote on it.

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