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Floor Speech
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues. I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership, but also Senator Smith, who has long led on this issue and has stood up time and time again for freedoms and reproductive freedom.
Yesterday, as she noted, we lost Cecile Richards, who was a true force of nature who spent her career fighting for reproductive freedom. We lost her just 2 days before what would be the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
But we all know that our country is now well into its third year without the protections of Roe. In the years since the Supreme Court overturned half a century of precedent and stripped away a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions--going against 70, 80 percent of Americans who believe that this decision should be made by a woman, her family, her doctor, and not by politicians; who believe, as my colleagues just noted, that politicians should not be in the waiting room making the decisions for families--women are now at the mercy of a patchwork of State laws that are creating chaos when it comes to accessing reproductive care.
So the solution is not the bill before us this week. The solution is not to take rare cases of the most tragic nature, as my colleagues have described.
I am a former prosecutor. I know what murder is. Murder is murder, including murder of a baby.
We are here talking about tragic cases where doctors have to make a decision in the moment with the family about how they are going to handle very, very tragic situations with a baby.
Today, nearly 20 States have enacted some form of abortion restriction. The result, a third of women of reproductive age now live under extreme, dangerous bans. And in States across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to travel hundreds of miles for healthcare. So adding to that situation, this idea that we are going to start intervening in these rare, tragic cases would be a horrible result for so many women.
I am thinking about the pregnant teenager in Texas who died after being denied care in three hospital visits. I am thinking about the young woman from Florida who was forced to miscarry in a bathroom due to her State's restrictions. By the time she finally got to a hospital, she had lost almost half the blood in her body. And we will never forget the heartbreaking story of the 10-year-old in Ohio who had to go to Indiana in order to get a legal abortion after she was raped. People said that story was a hoax. It wasn't a hoax; it was true.
Doctors are being threatened with prosecution for doing their jobs, an issue that will only get worse if we pass the legislation that Republicans have brought to the floor.
We already know that there have been repeated attempts to restrict mifepristone. Just last week, a judge allowed Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri to proceed with their lawsuit challenging FDA approval of the drug, which is safely used in 90 countries.
This is our reality right now, but it doesn't have to be our future. I call on our colleagues to join us in codifying Roe v. Wade into law. And simply because someone may have different views--I know many people in my own family who may be pro-life, but they don't believe that their views for what they would do in their personal life would apply to other people--and certainly not people--women--who at the very end of a pregnancy, something they have been so looking forward to, having a baby, have to have the Federal Government intervene and tell the doctor that we can't do this or she can't do that.
This isn't about politics. This isn't about red States and blue States. People across the country are on our side on this, and we ask our colleagues to vote with us and reject this bill.
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