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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I really want to thank my friend, our great leader on women's issues and on choice issues, Senator Murray, for leading this floor block. She has been indomitable on this issue. I can't think of a person who has done more to protect the rights of women than Patty Murray. So thank you for your great leadership.

I want to thank all my other colleagues who will join me as well.

Look, it is Donald Trump's first week as President, and Republicans are already escalating their war on women's reproductive freedoms. They didn't wait long. And the Republicans' desire to impose politicians' and their views on women's health and substitute their judgment for the judgment of the woman, her family, and her doctor continues.

There are many different permutations and combinations of this, but it is always: Take the women's rights away. Let some politician for some ideological reason decide.

This week, Senate Republicans will advance their so-called Born-Alive bill, a bill we have all seen before, which the Senate squarely rejected in the past. The bill is deeply pernicious because it attacks women's healthcare through false narratives and outright fearmongering. It seeks to make something illegal that is already illegal.

In essence, the Republican bill would substitute the judgment of qualified medical professionals and the wishes of millions of women and their families with an ultraright ideology. It is the long hand of injustice reaching down and hurting women from afar.

And so much of the legislation is passed, frankly, by men who have, really, no understanding of what women go through when they are through difficult situations like the one my colleague from Washington State has outlined.

This would harm the ability of medical professionals to provide healthcare based on evidence and on science. It would expose medical professionals to the risk of punishment and prosecution if they don't comply with the hard right.

So we are here because we need to expose this bill exactly for what it is: myth-based fearmongering. It is an attack on reproductive care.

The anti-choice movement keeps trying to come up with these scenarios to try and scare people, but they misstate the facts and misstate the evidence.

This bill is clear. It is an attack on reproductive care. It is anti- women, anti-family, anti-science.

I will tell my Republican colleagues this: Democrats will oppose any attempt to erode access to high-quality and safe reproductive care. Democrats will continue to fight for America's women, America's doctors, and America's families who sometimes have to make heartbreaking, difficult decisions when serious complications arise during pregnancy.

That is what makes this bill so, so horrible. It basically takes a woman who is in a very serious, difficult situation and tries to use her as a political football. That is a bad, bad thing.

So we should resoundingly reject this deeply partisan bill when it comes to the floor later this week.

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