Murray Leads Senate Democrats in Pushing Commonsense Bills to Protect Women's Fundamental Freedoms; Speaks on Senate Floor About Dobbs Fallout

Floor Speech

Thank you, Madam President. One year ago, Americans lost a constitutional right for the first time in history.

And they didn't just lose it--Republicans ripped it away.

Just one year now after the Dobbs decision, more than 22 million women have lost their right to an abortion.

No corner of our country has been spared from the fallout.

Abortion providers in states where abortion is legal--like in my home state of Washington--are being overworked, and just totally overwhelmed with patients who have had to wait weeks, and travel hundreds of miles, to get an abortion.

And then there's the wave of other appalling Republican attacks on abortion: proposals to charge grandmas and older sisters with human trafficking if they drive a minor out of state for an abortion, prosecute abortion providers--doctors--as criminals, ban emergency contraceptives like Plan B, and let's not forget the partisan lawsuit on mifepristone to rip safe medication abortion off the shelves in all 50 states!

You know, when you listen to patients about what this all means, when you hear the actual stories--the nightmares--that Republicans are putting women in this country through, they are heartbreaking.

Parents driving miles and miles, because their child was raped--their child is pregnant--and abortion is banned in their state.

Doctors being forced to forgo providing life-saving care--because they fear Republican politicians will put them in jail for doing their jobs.

Women facing miscarriages, left bleeding, unable to get the care they need for days on end.

One woman learned her fetus had no skull, no chance of survival--she still could not get an abortion in her state.

Another woman learned she had an ectopic pregnancy, a serious, life-threatening condition, but she wasn't able to get an abortion--instead, when she was on death's door, she had to get a hysterectomy.

Why? Because Republican politicians decided that their views mattered more than her health. Mattered more than her family.

Let's be clear: the vast, overwhelming majority of Americans stand with women, and support the right to choose abortion.

Every place abortion rights were on the ballot last November--every single place!--abortion rights won.

Still, Republicans are ignoring their constituents and doubling down on their extreme anti-abortion politics.

Just now, when we tried to pass other basic protections--and I mean the simplest, most straightforward protections imaginable--protections that just say, yes, you can travel to another state for an abortion; yes, doctors can provide an abortion in states where it is legal without fear of being thrown into prison; yes, we will protect the right to birth control; yes, we will keep your online health and location data private so it cannot be used against you…

Republicans said no, we're not going to let you do that.

A senator on the floor earlier even said that the legislation that restrict a woman's right to travel is really about protecting minors from trafficking.

Seriously? That is outrageous. And I was absolutely--I mean absolutely--outraged to hear him say that.

I hope that the American people understand that what those laws mean. What it means is that a grandmother taking a 17-year-old granddaughter--who was raped or maybe just wants to make her own personal health care decision--to a state where abortion is legal, could be jailed.

States like Idaho have passed these laws that restrict travel, and what they do is hold young women captive in their own state and threaten anyone who might help them get the care they need with time in prison.

Those kinds of laws and proposals in other states are an appalling attack on the rights of women--and our most basic right as Americans to travel freely within our own country.

I absolutely refuse to let a senator or anyone twist the reality of these truly heinous laws being passed to hold women captive and force them to stay pregnant no matter what.

Republicans have basically adopted two approaches to the health care crisis they caused. One: double down with increasingly extreme, dangerous proposals. Or, two: stick their heads in the sand.

Whether that means pretending this isn't a problem, pretending it's not really their fault, or hoping it will fade away.

But Madam President, there is just no forgetting the unforgivable pain Republicans' policies have caused.

There is no forgetting the fear of being pregnant when you don't want be, or the heartbreak of learning a pregnancy is not viable, or the horror of learning it is life-threatening--and knowing you have no control over your body.

There is no forgetting the panic of calculating how many thousands of miles you will have to travel to get care, or how many days you will have to take off of work, and wondering how you can possibly get the care you need and whether you will face legal action for doing so.

There is no forgetting being investigated for having a miscarriage, or driving your kid across state lines to get an abortion, or hearing your doctor tell you they cannot act to save your life because they are afraid of going to jail.

And people across this country are confronting those realities every single day.

Women are heartbroken, and terrified.

But, Madam President. They are also mad.

They are determined. And they're speaking out.

They are not going to settle for a country where they don't have the fundamental freedom to decide what happens to their own bodies, where their daughters and granddaughters have fewer rights than they did just a few years ago.

And neither am I.

We, on the Democratic side, are going to stand up, tell our stories, and we're going to make your voices heard.

And we're going to fight--here on this side--to restore the freedoms that Republicans took away.

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