Abortion

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this morning, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that would have restricted abortion providers so severely that Louisiana would have been left with only a single clinic. These types of laws have popped up in State after State as a backdoor means of banning abortions--if not in law then in practice--an insidious campaign to undermine the rights of women to make their own medical decisions.

Today's ruling is a thunderbolt of justice for millions of American women who were at risk of having their constitutional rights invalidated by a reactionary State legislature, as there are many throughout the country.

After surprising but very welcome rulings on DACA and LGBTQ rights 2 weeks ago, the Supreme Court has once again made the right decision. The Supreme Court is entering Buffalo Springfield, territory: ``There's something happening here.''

Truthfully, today's ruling should not have been a surprise. The Louisiana law violated the Court's precedent. In 2016, the Court struck down a Texas law that was virtually identical to the one in Louisiana. The newest addition to the Supreme Court, however, despite promising the Senate that he would respect precedent, dissented from the majority's ruling today. Justice Kavanaugh told Senators he believed Roe v. Wade to be settled law, but in the very first ruling on a related issue, he decided that the Court's precedent was wrong, and Roe v. Wade could be greatly undermined.

Thankfully, Kavanaugh's view was not in the majority. Today, America can breathe a sigh of relief that the Supreme Court kept the floodgates firmly shut against this particular attempt to nullify the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.

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