-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today to mark 3 years since half of America was stripped of their reproductive freedom. That is 3 years of women having fewer constitutional rights and freedoms in this country than their mothers and grandmothers; 3 years of women being forced to travel hours out of State to access basic care; and 3 years of Americans unable to make their own choices about their own bodies, their own health, their own families, their own future.

In Wisconsin, women don't have to imagine what the consequences of Roe v. Wade being overturned would be like. We lived it. For 15 months, in my State, women were sent back to live under a law that was passed before the Civil War. Yes, you heard me correctly--a law that was passed in 1849, 70 years before women would get the right to vote and only 1 year after the State of Wisconsin became a State.

Women who wanted to control their bodies had to drive hours. They had to arrange childcare, take time off of work, and pay for lodging just to access healthcare. Other pregnant women in our State bled in hospital parking lots for hours until they were on the verge of death before they were legally allowed to receive care.

Others, like Meagan, one of my constituents, found out that she and her husband were expecting. They found that out in April of 2023. She told me:

That day rivaled our wedding day for the happiest we'd ever been.

But that joy didn't last. At her 20-week ultrasound, Meagan discovered that her baby had severe abnormalities and likely would not survive. What is worse, every day that Meagan remained pregnant, her life was in danger too. But instead of grieving their loss in private and at home, Meagan and her husband were forced to travel to Minnesota to end her pregnancy.

She wrote to me last year:

The government claims that if my life is at risk, they would make exceptions, but how sick does one need to be? Do I need to be bleeding out before a doctor can intervene? Does someone need to go septic before a procedure would be performed?

The answers to those questions under Wisconsin's pre-Civil War abortion ban was, sadly, yes.

Thankfully, Wisconsin has restored access to abortion care in three counties. That still leaves women in 69 counties who face long drives and wait times to see a doctor for care.

I will be the first to say that we have some serious work to do to give women the full freedom to control their bodies. But instead of listening to the vast majority of Americans and working in good faith to restore Roe, my Republican colleagues are doing just the opposite.

The Republicans' ``Big Beautiful Betrayal'' is another step toward a backdoor national abortion ban. Their bill will defund Planned Parenthood, putting access to abortion care, once again, in jeopardy for Wisconsin women. And for many Americans, Planned Parenthood clinics are the only option they have for affordable healthcare, from basic reproductive care to lifesaving cancer screenings.

This ``Big Beautiful Betrayal Bill'' says that the mother of three, the young woman trying to make ends meet, the veteran in need of care, and anyone else on Medicaid can't use their coverage at Planned Parenthood for things like annual checkups, cancer screenings, birth control--not abortion, just basic healthcare that everyone needs and that my Republican colleagues, by the way, say they support.

But by doing this, it will defund one of the only abortion providers in many places and take Republicans one step closer to their ultimate goal of banning abortion nationwide.

It is no secret that this has been their plan. Since the day Roe was decided, it has become the mission of so many Republicans to turn back the clock and take away this constitutional right, this freedom.

And it all came to a head when our current President was last in office. Our current President's litmus test when nominating Supreme Court Justices was, of course, if they would rule to take away a woman's right to abortion. I don't think I need to tell you what happened next.

But overturning Roe was not enough for President Trump. In just the past 5 months, he has worked to undermine a woman's right to lifesaving abortion care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, otherwise known as EMTALA. He has worked to freeze title X funding for family planning and reproductive health services like birth control. He has worked to remove medically sound, expert information on reproductive care from government websites. And he has worked to jeopardize protections for women who are harassed while accessing clinics.

While Republicans advance their plan that will further restrict a woman's right to choose, Democrats are fighting back. Today, alongside every one of my Democratic colleagues, I introduced the Women's Health Protection Act to do what most Americans want: restore reproductive freedom for women nationwide.

I want to give a shout-out to my colleague Senator Blumenthal, with whom I worked so closely on the Women's Health Protection Act, over so many years.

This bill would tell Republicans to butt out of women's healthcare, ensuring that States can't impose medically unnecessary restrictions, like mandatory waiting periods or invasive ultrasounds, that infringe upon a woman's right to choose.

Today, we are not just marking 3 years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. We are marking 3 years of my Republican colleagues actively blocking any progress to restore the right to choose. We are marking 3 years of women's lives being in danger because Republicans are in our exam rooms, and lawyers across this country are truly playing doctors.

After 3 years of swearing abortion is an issue for the States, this President is chipping away even further at this freedom, and my Republican colleagues are advancing a plan to further undercut access to affordable reproductive care nationwide.

We are not giving up. We are with the two-thirds of Americans who oppose the Dobbs decision and the fundamental rights that it stole from millions of women in this country. We are going to fight every day until those rights are restored.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source