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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am so honored to follow my colleague from Wisconsin, who has been such a steadfast and strong partner in this effort to advance the Women's Health Protection Act.

I will be honest in this Chamber. When we first introduced this measure, almost 15 years ago, the idea that Roe v. Wade could or would be tossed aside was unimaginable. It was firmly established law for decades, relied on by American women and men.

In a stroke of catastrophic, misguided ruling, the Supreme Court cast it aside, ignoring strong precedent and all the doctrines of law that normally would apply. So the Women's Health Protection Act now is more necessary than ever before, certainly than in the days when we first offered it.

My own involvement, actually, in this issue began when I was a law clerk to Justice Blackmun in the year after Roe v. Wade. There was still controversy about whether Roe would survive. But in decision after decision, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed it. And, in fact, as a member of the Connecticut State Senate, I offered a bill, and it passed, to codify Roe v. Wade in our State laws in Connecticut.

Connecticut has led the Nation proudly in protecting reproductive rights, in safeguarding access to clinics where abortion services are provided, in fighting for Planned Parenthood funding, in protecting doctors who provide these critical services to women coming from other States that may actually criminalize that kind of care.

But we know now what the challenge is and what we must do. The Women's Health Protection Act should be the law of our land. But in the meantime, we have to fight the efforts to handicap and straitjacket women in their efforts simply to seek basic healthcare.

We are in the midst of an assault on women's healthcare. It is really an attack on women and families.

Men have a stake in this fight. You cannot escape this issue simply because you are a man. It affects you and your family as much as it does women.

The decision in Dobbs stripped millions of women of the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions. The idea that Dobbs would simply return the issue of reproductive rights to the State was always disingenuous. States across the country have created a full-blown healthcare crisis in the chaos and confusion that has ensued.

Since Dobbs, more than 31 million women live in States where abortion is banned or under the threat of banning it, and nearly 9 million women live in the 12 States with bills proposing to bring homicide charges against them for having an abortion.

The effects of Dobbs don't have to be a matter of speculation anymore. I actually commissioned or requested a study from the GAO in 2022 about the economic effects of Dobbs. That report has just been released 3 years later. My first reaction was: Why did it take so long? My second reaction was: Thank goodness you took that long and you did an honest and accurate appraisal of what the effects are.

Here is the bottom line: Dobbs has been a death sentence--literally, a death sentence--for countless women, and it has been a condemnation to financial disaster for many more.

This study shows, inextricably, the link between denial of healthcare and the maternal mortality rate for women and their financial distress, even if they survive.

The Trump administration has aggravated this problem in, literally, just recent weeks. On June 19, 2025, a Trump-appointed Federal judge struck down a Biden administration rule that strengthened privacy protections for information related to productive healthcare, such as abortion and gender-affirming care.

On March 5, 2025, President Trump announced his administration would no longer enforce a Federal law that requires hospitals to provide women abortion care in an emergency when their lives are threatened. When, literally, they could die, no longer will emergency rooms be required to provide that care.

On April 1 of this year, the Trump administration began withholding tens of millions of dollars under title X in family grants for Planned Parenthood and other organizations in our country that support critical family planning efforts and preventive healthcare, including cancer screening, pregnancy testing, birth control, treatment of sexually transmitted infections, infertility services, and more. It is not just efforts to prevent abortion; it is a war on women's health, launched by this administration. And, unfortunately, this administration is just getting started.

The fact is that unsafe and unintended pregnancies have huge costs in lives and dollars, impacting all of us. That is why I am proud to live in Connecticut that has expanded abortion care and ensured that women in other States could access compassionate care if necessary.

But the attacks by Republicans continue, and they are attacks on reproductive freedom, on women's healthcare, seeking now to restrict access to abortion medication, refusing to recognize the right to use contraceptives, working to defund preventive healthcare through Medicaid in clinics like Planned Parenthood.

I am proud to continue this fight. It is a fight that we absolutely must win. It may not be in the next days, but we will be fighting in the next days against the provisions of this ``Big Ugly Betrayal'' that so disgrace our Nation if passed.

I am grateful for all of the Members on our side who are joining us today on this third anniversary of Dobbs to say: Enough is enough. We need to protect reproductive freedoms from this onslaught against women.

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