Unanimous Consent Request--S. 177

Floor Speech

This bill, which targets the largest provider of reproductive care in this country, is part of my Republican colleagues' relentless efforts to undermine reproductive rights and further erode the health, the freedom, and the dignity of the American people.

Four years ago this week, the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision, tearing down nearly 50 years of constitutional protections and declaring open season on American reproductive freedom.

Since then, Republicans got to work. States passed sweeping abortion bans. They peeled back protections for birth control. They created confusing, punitive, and terrifying schemes that have thrown patients into jail and charged their providers for simply receiving and providing basic medical care. And this is just the beginning.

Today, my Republican colleagues are again seeking to advance their anti-choice, anti-health, anti-family, anti-freedom agenda right here on the Senate floor. They want to strip funding from health centers that prescribe birth control. They want to strip funding from health centers that provide birth control, that treat infections, that screen for cancer--and, yes, that offer abortions. The result? Hundreds of closed clinics. Traveling farther to get care. Paying more or not getting care at all. Untreated illnesses. Delayed cancer diagnoses. I will not allow that to happen without a fight.

Let me be clear about where Republicans stand. Republicans will not protect the right to an abortion. Republicans will not protect the right to birth control. Republicans will not protect the right for Americans to decide their own futures. Instead, they will continue to pursue an agenda that is so offended by bodily autonomy that they would rather follow the extremism of the few than the will of the majority, who want their reproductive rights protected.

We must make the right to contraception the law of the land. Are you ready for me to say that again? We must make the right to contraception the law of the land before extremist judges and legislators further strip it away to advance their radical political agenda.

By the way, this is not some hypothetical. In his written opinion for the Dobbs decision, Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court of the United States urged the Court to overturn settled precedent and threaten the fundamental right to contraception.

We know what the ``GOP'' really stands for: ``Gutting Our Protections.''

That is why I am again calling for the Senate to pass my Right to Contraception Act. This legislation would enshrine in Federal law the right to obtain and use contraception and put in place vital protections for providers.

The right to contraception shouldn't be a partisan issue. Americans of all parties overwhelmingly support it. It is central to an individual's health, well-being, life, liberty, equality, and economic and social freedom. It is a right grounded in the fundamental ability to make decisions about one's own body, one's own family, one's own future.

We must meet the clarity of their extremism with the clarity of justice. That is why I am out here on the floor of the Senate today--to make sure we debate that clarity which must be brought to this central issue of families' well-being all across our country.

Therefore, I ask that the consent be modified; that, instead, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 422. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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