Cloture Motion
Floor Speech
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a new resolution that I introduced which reaffirms the basic principle that when you go to the ER, they should be allowed to treat you.
When your life is in danger, doctors should be able to do their job. And when you need emergency care, including an abortion, no politician should stop you from getting it. This is so simple.
And yet, when President Biden and Vice President Harris tried to make that clear, Republicans worked to stop them, opposing the basic notion that, yes, ER doctors might have to provide emergency abortion care to save a woman's life.
Make no mistake, we are talking about women whose water breaks dangerously early or who are experiencing uncontrollable hemorrhage or sepsis or preeclampsia.
These are patients we are saying doctors should treat under the basic right to emergency care. These are the women Republicans don't think deserve access to emergency care.
I don't know where on the long path of anti-abortion extremism that saving lives became a bridge too far for so many Republicans, but that is where we are. It is not just an extreme position, it is a very dangerous one, and it is a deadly one.
There are so many tragic stories about how Republican abortion bans are hurting women. Those stories include women who have been unable to get an abortion after a pregnancy became bad for their health, unable to get one after the situation had become a medical emergency, unable to get one until the only option was a hysterectomy that totally ends their dream of having a child one day, and in some heartbreaking cases, women have been unable to get an abortion until it is too late. They have died. They have died because Republican bans denied and delayed the care they needed.
Just this week, we heard the stories of two Black mothers who lost their lives in Georgia due to the State's draconian abortion ban. According to a report from ProPublica, in 2022, after Georgia's 6-week abortion ban went into effect, a pregnant woman went into the ER. She was a single mom. She had a serious infection and needed a D&C. That is a routine procedure and the standard of care for her condition.
Her case was not a mystery, but even if it was clear that a D&C would save her life, it was not clear her doctors could provide that without facing legal danger under their State's abortion law. Her condition worsened. Her blood pressure dropped. Her organs started failing. And by the time she got the procedure, 19 hours after she arrived at the ER, it was too late, and tragically she died.
The State's medical review committee concluded there is a good chance she would have survived if the procedure had happened sooner. Her name was Amber Thurman.
Another Black woman in Georgia died without ever seeking medical care. She was too afraid to see a doctor given ``the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.''
The State's medical review committee also found her death to be preventable, a heartbreaking outcome for the three children she left behind. Her name was Candi Miller.
How can that be the status quo in our country in the 21st century? How is anyone OK with this? How does anyone think that these extreme abortion bans are a good idea? How does anyone oppose clarifying women have a right to emergency care? Don't we want our hospitals to save lives?
How can anyone look at this wreckage? How can you hear the stories from doctors who are wracked with guilt for decisions Republican politicians made for them? How can you hear the stories from these women who have bled and suffered and died? How can anyone hear the chilling accounts of women who have died and just shrug it off and say, ``Well, I am sure this will blow over'' or ``It wasn't so bad''?
And yet we have Republicans, by and large, just trying to ignore this and trying to get everyone to whistle past the graveyard that they spent decades digging.
As if a woman would ever in her life forget the time her doctor said: Yes, you are in danger; yes, we know how to treat you; but, no, I can't do it--politicians won't let them.
As if a mother would ever forget losing her daughter because she was denied care; as if a husband would ever forget losing his wife; as if a kid growing up without a mother because she was denied emergency abortion care will ever, ever for a single day of their life forget this.
We have Republican-led States hearing from providers about how completely unworkable and dangerous these bans are and not really lifting a finger to meaningfully address this problem. We have States where people are trying to put it to the voters, trying to let the people have their say on these bans, and Republicans have been fighting those tooth and nail, tooth and nail, to block them--just to let people have their say.
And we have Donald Trump still, after all this has happened, saying everyone wanted Roe overturned. That is what he said. Everyone wanted Roe overturned? Whom is he listening to? He is saying it is great States can cause this chaos; it is great politicians can effectively lock patients out of an emergency care room.
Make no mistake, this is the post-Roe world Republicans spent decades fighting for. This is the policy outcome that Trump and Republicans moved Heaven and Earth to achieve, and they make that clearer and clearer every time they not only refuse to lift a finger to stop it, but Republicans even filed a brief telling the Supreme Court, essentially: No, we don't think doctors should be required to provide abortion care when a patient's life is at stake--when a patient's life is at stake.
If Republicans thought even in the slightest that this is a problem, they could start by cosponsoring our resolution saying it is a problem. This should not be a hard step. Let's see who takes me up on that offer. I am waiting to see.
When I think about the carnage that Republican abortion bans have caused, I truly cannot put my outrage into words, but I can be here, and I can share the horror stories I am hearing on the Senate floor and give voice to those patients and providers who are living this nightmare firsthand: dying women being turned away from an emergency room, being left to bleed out, left to get sicker, left to miscarry on their own. The lucky ones--the lucky ones--get airlifted to a State like mine where abortion is legal and protected.
By July of this year, one hospital in Idaho, next to my State, had already airlifted six pregnant women out of the State for emergency abortion care. The unlucky ones died.
We can't look away from this hard reality: here in America, in the 21st century, pregnant women dying not because doctors don't know how to save them but because doctors don't know if Republicans will let them.
As the Presiding Officer well knows, we have a maternal mortality crisis in this country, and these bans are making it worse. We are moving in the wrong direction. And to Republicans who have the gall to talk about exceptions for the life of the mother, while arguing against abortion care as emergency care, even when it is lifesaving, what do you think emergency care is for? What do you think emergency care is for?
And let's be clear, providing emergency stabilizing care is the bare minimum to keep a patient alive. These women may have undergone tremendous trauma and suffering up until they meet the threshold for emergency stabilizing care. It should never have to get to that point.
Women should not have to lose organ function before they can get medical care. They shouldn't have to bleed out in a parking lot. They shouldn't have to be left to miscarry on their own.
Their husband shouldn't have to find them, when he comes home, bleeding and unconscious and call 9-1-1 in a panic. This is what is happening, and I know the Presiding Officer feels the same; we are not going to stand for this. This will not become a new accepted normal, period.
Democrats are going to continue to be here to tell these women's stories. We are going to continue pressing to fully restore reproductive freedoms for every woman in America, and we are going to continue to be putting a white-hot spotlight on the devastating, deadly fallout of Republicans' extreme anti-abortion policies of Donald Trump abortion bans and on the cruel callousness Trump has offered in response--never missing an opportunity to gloat about overturning Roe v. Wade.
Women and families are listening to him gloat. They are not going to forget, and I know we won't.
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