Women's Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire.

For millions of American women, reading the news this morning was like stepping into a time machine and going back 50 years, seeing the headlines and the photos of this all-male panel in the House talking about a woman's right to access birth control, and no women on the panel. It turns out the chairman of the House oversight committee decided he was not going to allow a young woman who had been asked by the minority to testify and tell her story--actually of a friend who had lost an ovary because of her lack of contraception coverage. So this 19-year-old woman was left to watch, like the rest of us, as all five men addressed the committee about how they supported efforts to restrict access to care.

I am sure by now many of my colleagues here have seen this picture of this all-male panel, the picture that says a thousand words. It is one that most women thought was left behind when pictures only came in black and white.

But this was not the only story this morning that made women feel as if the clock had been turned back on them. The other story comes to us from the Republican Presidential nomination trail. It seems that yesterday, on national television, one of the chief financial backers for Rick Santorum, the Republican candidate who is now surging toward the nomination, suggested that contraception was once as simple as a woman putting aspirin between her knees. Really? Shocking. Appalling. An insult. In fact, both of these stories are enough to make any woman, regardless of her own politics, angry. It certainly does me.

These are things that are happening today and they are enough to make you believe that after years of progress, nothing has changed. For many women and men who are waking up to the news this morning, it may seem this is a swift and sudden attack on women's health care, but I am here on the floor of the Senate today to tell you all there is nothing sudden about it. There is nothing new about these Republican attacks on our family planning decisions. In fact, from the moment they came into power, Republicans in the House of Representatives have been waging a war on women's health. If you do not believe me, look at the first bills they introduced after they arrived here in Washington, DC, and were sworn into office. After campaigning across the country on a platform of jobs and the economy, the first three bills they introduced were direct attacks on women's health in America.

The very first bill, H.R. 1, would have totally eliminated title X funding for family planning and teen pregnancy prevention. It included an amendment that would have completely defunded Planned Parenthood and cut off support for millions of women who count on it.

Another one of their opening round of bills, more than a year ago, would have permanently codified the Hyde amendment and the DC abortion ban, and the original version of their bill did not even include an exception for the health of the mother.

Finally, they introduced a bill right away that would have rolled back every single one of the gains we worked so hard to get for women in the health care reform bill. It would have removed the caps on out-of-pocket expenses that protect women from losing their homes and their life savings if they get sick. It ended the ban on lifetime limits on coverage. It allowed insurance companies to once again discriminate against women by charging them higher premiums or even denying women access for so-called preexisting conditions--that, by the way, includes pregnancy.

It would have rolled back the guarantee that insurance companies cover contraceptive activities, which will save the overwhelming majority of women who use them hundreds of dollars a year.

In addition to showing their true colors with their very first legislative efforts, Republicans have shown they will go to about any limit to restrict our access to care, even shutting down the Federal Government. It seems extreme? That is exactly what happened last April, when Republicans nearly shuttered the Federal Government over a rider that was another attempt to go after title X and Planned Parenthood.

I remember, I was in those meetings, months and months of negotiations on the numbers in our budget. I was astonished that Republicans, late at night, were willing to throw all that work away to go after women's health. I was the only woman in the room that night. I can remember being personally disgusted that Republicans thought they could get away with making women victims, under the cover of darkness, in the middle of the night, with moments to go before the government was shut down.

But I also remember the resounding ``no'' when they tried to pull that, first from me, then from my women colleagues joining me today, and then a loud and overwhelming chorus of men and women all across the country. That chorus of women was heard again a few weeks ago after yet another attack on women's health care. This time the attack came cloaked in a sham investigation led by some of the same
congressional Republicans who yesterday had this all-male panel talking about women's contraception.

It was an investigation of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer charity sites to cut off funding for lifesaving breast cancer screenings for women. We know what happened after the outcry followed that decision. I certainly remember going home and standing shoulder to shoulder with women and men in my home State in front of a clinic that provided those breast screening referrals and pledging to safeguard against any future attacks in the wake of that decision, but I didn't think it would come the very next week. Apparently, Republicans are still not done. Even after the loud rebuke after the Komen decision, they have decided again to pick on women's health.

Just last week, the junior Senator from Missouri introduced an amendment to a job-creating transportation infrastructure bill that is as extreme as anything we have seen. It is an amendment that will allow any employer--a barber, a banker, a multinational corporation--to be given an exemption to not cover contraception or any essential preventive for any religious or moral reason. It is an amendment that would give any employer an unprecedented license to dictate what women can and cannot have covered. It puts your employer smack in the middle between you and your health care. It is politics between women and their health care, and before the news that women across the country awoke to this morning, it was just the most recent in a very long line of attacks on our reproductive rights.

Contraceptive coverage should not be a controversial issue. It is supported by the vast majority of Americans who understand how important it is for women and their families, but let me remind everyone Republicans have made it clear from the start this is not about what is best for women or men or their family-planning decisions, it is apparently a political calculation. This is about their constituency. It is about their continued push to do whatever it takes to push their extreme agenda.

The women of the Senate, the Democratic women, are here to say enough. We are standing today and every day to fight for women and their right to make their own basic health care decisions, not their employer, not an extreme part of the Republican Party, not some men on a panel but themselves. We will continue to do so, and I am proud to stand with the women of the Senate to do just that.

I yield the floor.

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