Blumenthal Demands Action to Defend Reproductive Healthcare Ahead of Senate Vote on the Women's Health Protection Act

[HARTFORD, CT] –   U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), author and lead Senate sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), spoke on the Senate Floor today ahead of a key procedural vote to proceed with debate on the bill.

“Let’s not forget for one moment the reality on the ground. The reality is for millions of Americans, their futures, in some cases their lives, depend on accessible abortion care and the implications and ramifications affect men as well as women, families as well as moms,” Blumenthal said on the Senate Floor.

“We've had enough meddling by politicians and politically motivated judges getting between Americans and their personal health care decisions. We've had enough with the shameful assaults on people's freedoms and futures. We can't go back. And we need this action now.”

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade in decades. WHPA would guarantee equal access to abortion everywhere by overturning and halting medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion care that interfere with a patient’s individual choice or the provider-patient relationship. The legislation passed the House of Representatives 218-211 but unanimous opposition from Senate Republicans prevented it from moving forward today in the Senate.

The video of Blumenthal’s remarks is available here and the full transcript is copied below.

We will be voting in just a few minutes on the Women's Health Protection Act, which I have proudly sponsored, first introduced in 2013, and I want to thank particularly Senator Schumer for his leadership and Senator Murray for enabling us to have this historic vote.

It is historic. The first vote that we will take guaranteeing the right of a provider to provide abortion care – which is health care – and the right of a patient to receive that care. And there are very few votes that we will take in the United States Senate in the course of our career that will have as profound and dramatic an impact on the lives of all Americans.

Yes, reproductive health care is women's health care by and large, but it is human health care. Women's rights are human rights. And the decisions that women make about when and whether to become pregnant are intensely personal. They should not be interfered with by any of us – anyone from the government, anyone else.

That right is protected by the Constitution.

Today's vote comes at a time of unparalleled attack on equal access to abortion care in this country. I clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court in the term after he wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. And at that time we all believed that the decision would put an end to this controversy, this debate, once and for all.

And yet here we are five decades later, what was then unthinkable now has happened. The United States Supreme Court has voluntarily taken a case that calls into question a woman's right to choose. And the United States Supreme Court seems to be on track based on its refusal to stop implementation of the Texas [six-week] ban on abortion to overturning Roe v. Wade.

Now, the United States Supreme Court will never say ‘we hereby overturn Roe v. Wade.’ This majority – influenced by right-wing ideology – will in effect overturn it without saying so. Because across the street in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Care Organization, the question of whether Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15-weeks is constitutional is squarely before the court.

And make no mistake: if the court upholds that Mississippi law, Roe v. Wade will no longer be the law of the land; Planned Parenthood v. Casey will no longer be the law of the land. Fifty years of jurisprudence will be gone without ever telling us that Roe is overturned. The court will move that goalpost and Roe will fall and at least 20 states through trigger laws are prepared to immediately prohibit abortion completely and entirely.

If you don't understand this threat, just ask the women of Texas. They're currently living in a state without protections of Roe. That dangerous anti-abortion law, S.B. 8, contains a six-week abortion ban – six weeks. Far before many women even know that they are pregnant. And even worse, the law’s divisive bounty hunter provision deputizes a woman's neighbors, friends, family and acquaintances.

Last year alone 19 states enacted 106 restrictions, including 12 abortion bans. For the first time ever, states enacted more than 100 abortion restrictions in a single year.

My bill, the Women's Health Protection Act, would put an end to this relentless and ever growing attack on reproductive rights. It would create a federal statutory right for health care providers to provide abortion care. It would be provide a right for patients to receive that care, free from medically unnecessary restrictions that single out and impede abortion access.

Let's not forget for one moment the reality on the ground. The reality is for millions of Americans, their futures, in some cases their lives, depend on accessible abortion care and the implications and ramifications affect men as well as women, families as well as moms.

We've had enough meddling by politicians and politically motivated judges getting between Americans and their personal health care decisions. We've had enough with the shameful assaults on people's freedoms and futures. We can't go back. And we need this action now. It is time, it is time, Madam President, to pass the Women's Health Protection Act.

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