ICYMI Video: Blumenthal Speaks on Senate Floor Urging Passage of Access to Family Building Act

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke on the Senate Floor yesterday after Republicans blocked passage of the Access to Family Building Act. The legislation, introduced by U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), works to protect the right to access in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and other assisted reproductive technology services nationwide and would establish a statutory right to access IVF for all Americans who need it to start or grow a family.

“What has become devastatingly and tragically clear is that the Republican party's animosity towards women's health and women's rights doesn't stop at abortion,” said Blumenthal.

Blumenthal’s speech on the Senate Floor comes after an Alabama Supreme Court Ruling that severely restricted access to IVF in the state.

“This measure very simply guarantees the right for women and families everywhere—in Alabama and Connecticut, in every state in this country—to access the fertility care they need to bring children into the world,” continued Blumenthal. “Women's rights are human rights. The rights at stake here are rights that are American.”

On Friday in Hartford, Blumenthal will join Connecticut reproductive rights advocates to rally support for the bill and urge Congress to swiftly pass this critical legislation.

Video of Blumenthal’s remarks can be found here. A transcript of Blumenthal’s speech is available below.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal: Thank you. I've been really awed and humbled by the eloquence of the women senators who have preceded me, and I hesitate to add to what they've stated so powerfully already. But of course, I'm a man, and this bill is about women's reproductive care and women's rights, but it is also about the rights of all of us. The name of the act is the Access to Family Building Act. It's about families. It's about men like myself whose most awesome moment in life was the time they held their newly born child.

Men have an equal stake in the issue that brings us here today. Men should be as scared and angry as women are about this trend which is so destructive to basic rights and liberties. Women's rights are human rights. The rights at stake here are rights that are American. What could be more American than wanting to bring a child into the world?

And what could be more heartbreaking? We've all been through it through friends, neighbors, maybe our own family. Man and woman in love, wanting to have a child, miscarriages, other obstacles that prevent it. And there is a hole in their hearts, a hole in their homes and their families, as they struggle with issues of fertility and childbirth.

This measure very simply guarantees the right for women and families everywhere—in Alabama and Connecticut, in every state in this country—to access the fertility care they need to bring children into the world.

You know, over three years ago, before Dobbs was decided, and we never could have imagined that Roe V. Wade would be overturned and the Republican party eviscerated access to abortion care, I posed what I thought was a really easy question to a Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. I asked, “Is it constitutional to criminalize IVF treatment?” She dodged, she ducked, she refused to answer.

I thought it was self-evident. It is not constitutional to criminalize IVF treatment. That was before Dobbs, that was before the legal landscape was volcanically uprooted by this Supreme Court, which has been captured by a far-right fringe.

Some may have wondered why at that time, I asked what seemed like a very far-fetched, abstruse, arcane question. A lot of people probably didn't even know what it meant. And they may have also wondered why Justice Barrett refused to answer such an obvious question with such a self-evident answer.

Wasn't it settled that IVF treatment is not only legally protected but also a scientific miracle? Think of it for a moment. The science here that is now accessible to every American, everyone in the world. And wasn't IVF pro-family—having children, parents who wanted a child, and they may have wondered as well, wasn't IVF the last best hope for so many people struggling with infertility, desperately seeking to experience the miracle of childbirth for themselves? Who could possibly object to that miracle in the lives of a family who would not only relish but raise a child to contribute to our great country?

What has become devastatingly and tragically clear is that the Republican party's animosity towards women's health and women's rights doesn't stop at abortion. It's why I asked that IVF question in 2020, and it's why I didn't get a clear answer from a Republican nominee of the Supreme Court. The war on women and on reproductive choices by women, and the war on families, hasn't stopped at abortion or even IVF.

The Presiding Officer: Senator, your time is up.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal: So I conclude by thanking my colleagues who have brought this measure to the floor, particularly Senator Duckworth, and I regret that Republicans have blocked this measure. Thank you, Madam President

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