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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday, I joined Leader Schumer, Senators Baldwin, Blumenthal, and Murray and a number of my colleagues in introducing a piece of legislation that is urgently needed. It is entitled the Women's Health Protection Act of 2023.

This bill would protect the right to obtain and provide reproductive healthcare--as basic as anything in America--as well as the freedom of Americans to seek this care free of medically unnecessary restrictions or limitations as to where a patient can receive it.

It has been about 9 months since the Thomas-Alito Court ripped away this fundamental right in America and put a target on the backs of women and healthcare providers across the country. Since then, we have heard one horror story after another--stories of rape victims as young as 10 years old who have been forced to travel across State lines to receive critical healthcare, stories of women who were suffering miscarriages but still have been denied care by doctors in red States where the doctors are afraid of being charged with a crime, stories of women who have been abandoned by their State's leaders, many of whom have found refuge in the State of Illinois.

Despite these stories of girls and women who have been denied critical healthcare because of partisan politics, Republicans are continuing to push dangerous abortion bans and restrictions. These politicians think they know better than the women who are affected by these decisions and their doctors.

Beware of the moment when legislators start playing doctor. They are doing it all across America on this issue. They are wrong.

We need to respect the freedom and right of women and the expertise of their medical professionals, period, and we need to recognize that politicians have no business in the hospital room or in the doctor's office. There should be a matter of privacy and respect that should be guiding our policy.

If we want to defend freedom and fundamental rights in America, we need to pass the Women's Health Protection Act.

The debate has even gone so far as to affect the corner drugstore.

This week, I was on the phone with the CEO of Walgreens, an Illinois- based company, one of the largest pharmacy companies in the United States of America. They are torn currently by an announcement of policy earlier this week which generated a lot of controversy: whether or not they will dispense medications which are used to end a pregnancy.

I begged them to at least wait until this issue has become clearer in the courts before taking a corporate position. The other major pharmacy chains are making the same decision themselves. We will find out what they conclude.

But it is an indication that this debate has gone far beyond the floor of the U.S. Senate in Washington--it is on your street corner; it is in your mall; it is in the shopping center that you have been going to all your life--as to whether or not you can have access to a drug that was judged safe and effective 20 years ago by the Federal Government.

That is what happens when legislators decide to be doctors.

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