[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 61 (Wednesday, April 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2019-S2021]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Women's Healthcare

  Madam President, I am going to use the remainder of my time to 
discuss another issue that came up often in the debate, and that is the 
right of American women to control their bodies. I am talking here 
about Roe v. Wade.
  The Supreme Court has effectively overturned Roe already when you 
look, for example, at the various States. The Court has overturned Roe 
for millions and millions of people. They did it on the shadow docket 
by allowing an obviously unconstitutional bounty law in Texas to go 
into effect. Now States all over the country are passing similar laws, 
and in some States, they are going even further to restrict the 
fundamental right of women to control their own bodies.
  The fact of the matter is, this debate is not just about Roe. It is 
becoming commonplace for Republicans to say out in the open that the 
Supreme Court ruled incorrectly in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 
case that affirmed the right of married people to use contraception. 
That is what this debate has become all about--not just the right to a 
safe and legal abortion; it is about rolling back the right to birth 
control.
  Republicans are saying that the case that affirmed the right to use 
birth control was wrongly decided. That is what our colleague from 
Tennessee who just spoke said ahead of the hearings on Judge Jackson's 
nomination.
  It is enough to leave you wondering: What year is this? What century 
is this?
  Connecticut's ban on contraception was based on a Federal law from 
the 1870s, a law from a time when women's rights were few. They 
couldn't even vote.
  For Connecticut to have that kind of law on the books in 1965 was a 
ridiculous infringement on the liberty and body autonomy of American 
women. Estelle Griswold, the women's rights activist whose name is atop 
the case, once half-joked that the State would have to ``put a 
gynecological table at the Greenwich toll station'' to prevent women 
from going to New York to get the contraception they needed.
  But the history in Connecticut shows, as is often the case, this old 
restriction on personal liberty fell hardest on women without means, 
even when the law was badly out of date.
  The Supreme Court ruled correctly when it struck down Connecticut's 
law in 1965. To say otherwise is appalling and alarming. The Court 
recognized that the government ought to stay out of people's private 
decisions about family planning. A few years later, the court correctly 
applied the Griswold precedent to single women. A year after that came 
Roe.
  These cases are linked. Put together, the attacks on Roe, and now 
Griswold, they are about letting the government control when somebody 
decides to start a family. We are talking about rolling back 80 years 
of basic human rights.
  Prior to her appointment on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
wrote in these debates over Roe:

       Also in the balance is a woman's autonomous charge of her 
     life's full course . . . her ability to stand in relation to 
     man, society, and the state as an independent, self-
     sustaining equal citizen.

  When the Court upheld Roe in 1992, the majority ruled that ``[t]he 
ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life 
of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their 
reproductive lives.''
  If women can't legally obtain birth control and they can't legally 
obtain abortion care, they no longer have legal control over their 
bodies. Let's be clear.
  If women do not control their own bodies, they don't control their 
own lives. And if Americans don't control their own lives, they are not 
free and equal under the law.
  Tossing out Roe--the way this Court has--is an act of judicial 
radicalism. Every Republican Supreme Court nominee swears up and down 
that they respect precedent; they won't legislate from the bench. Then 
they go out and toss out Roe on the shadow docket.
  For Republicans now to be going after Griswold is staggering and 
dangerous. For Senators to be attacking this ruling 57 years after the 
case was decided is ridiculous.
  This is not just because birth control is part of basic health 
regimens. It is because women in America have an equal right to chart 
the course of their lives and when to become pregnant.

[[Page S2020]]

  Now, Republicans often talk about their position in the context of 
States' rights. Too often, what they are saying is they believe in 
States' rights only if they believe the State is right, and we see that 
on issue after issue.
  And, finally, it is important to consider these debates in the 
context of what is happening in statehouses around the country. 
Republican legislatures are effectively banning abortion. They are 
passing laws that do more to protect rapists than rape victims. They 
criminalize abortion care, and in other cases they are criminalizing 
the act of helping women obtain the healthcare they need.
  Some States want to make it impossible to use these kinds of 
medicines and therapies to safely end pregnancies early. A Republican 
lawmaker in Missouri recently proposed forcing women to carry ectopic 
pregnancies to term, which is effectively a death sentence.
  The bottom line is, what is happening today, in 2022, is collectively 
the most extreme attack on reproductive health, freedom, and equality 
in America I can remember.
  And I am just going to close by saying this is not the same debate as 
we have had over Roe. State-level Republicans are going way beyond that 
point.
  For Republicans here in this Congress to be going after Griswold--
after birth control--is a shocking escalation in the fight they are 
making to roll back the rights of women.
  American lives and liberty are at stake. Americans need to be 
prepared to fight for freedom and equality in the months and years 
ahead. I am sure going to be out there with them.
  In the meantime, I believe Judge Jackson is going to make an 
outstanding Supreme Court Justice and a bulwark for the rights of women 
and all Americans.
  This is a historic confirmation, one that is long overdue. I am proud 
to give Judge Jackson my vote, and I urge my colleagues to support her 
nomination as well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3959

  Mr. HAGERTY. Madam President, I am here today to discuss what I saw 
this past weekend when I took a trip to our southern border in Texas.
  I led a delegation of eight sheriffs and mayors from my home State of 
Tennessee. We went to see what is happening, what the effects of the 
border crisis are, and to hear from them and allow the border agents to 
hear from them the effects of the border crisis in our own communities 
in Tennessee.
  Our mayors and sheriffs are seeing record drug overdoses, gang 
violence, and other forms of criminal activity right there in 
Tennessee.
  We learned that what is really happening at our border is quite 
simple: Well-financed, operationally sophisticated drug cartels, with 
the help of the Chinese Communist Party, are exploiting our immigration 
policies and human economic desires to make billions of dollars from 
drug and human trafficking.
  Ignored by the Biden administration and the corporate media, this 
increasingly powerful criminal enterprise is expanding further into 
American communities.
  Our trip revealed two key insights. First, under Biden policies, this 
national security crisis is unmanageable. Second, and paradoxically, 
this crisis is well within the Federal Government's ability to fix.
  My central takeaway was this: If every American saw what we saw and 
heard, this would end. America wouldn't tolerate this. It is a crisis.
  Here is the cartels' business model: Fentanyl ingredients are shipped 
from China to Mexico. In Mexico, the cartels turn these chemicals into 
astonishingly potent drugs bound for the United States.
  Last year, fentanyl seized at the border was more than enough to kill 
every American. And that is just what we caught. Think about what has 
not been caught. Think about what is getting through.
  The cartels control the entire Mexican side of the U.S. border, and 
each migrant must pay thousands of dollars for safe passage to these 
cartels. Often, they have to pay through subsequent indentured 
servitude. Many young women become victims of human trafficking.
  So in this vicious cycle, the more illegal immigration, the more 
money for the cartels; and the more money for the cartels, the more 
drugs they produce.
  For cartels, the illegal immigrants are more than an expendable 
revenue source. They are a tool for facilitating transport of drugs and 
criminals. The cartels push scores of migrant customers across the 
border so they can occupy American border agents. Then they exploit the 
resulting gaps in patrol coverage to move across drugs, gang members, 
those they refer to as ``high-value'' individuals, terrorist-watch-list 
members, and others.
  Border Patrol agents told me that, given the recordbreaking border 
crossings they are currently facing, there are times when every agent 
is busy processing migrant paperwork, leaving the border wide open for 
drug and human trafficking. The drugs and gang members and the 
accompanying violence will then flood into our American communities.
  As one agent put it: The people crossing the border don't stay in 
this area, and neither do the drugs.
  More than 100,000 Americans died last year from drug overdoses, 
mostly from fentanyl, which are really more akin to CCP-engineered 
poisonings. Several thousands were Tennesseans. The Tennessee sheriffs 
and mayors on this trip told me that deaths from illicit drug overdoses 
in their counties are at record highs. Our Tennessee sheriffs know the 
families in their communities. They told me the toughest part of their 
job is to see a mother or a grandmother, to go to their home and tell 
them that their son or their grandson will never return. It is 
heartbreaking. Each one of these obituaries has the CCP's fingerprint 
on it.

  The migrants' money and usefulness to distract border agents are 
essential to the cartels' operations. These illegal immigrants are 
incentivized to come because of our current catch-and-release policies.
  To illustrate the current policy of absurdity, last Friday, around 
midnight, near a stretch of--of course--unfinished border wall, right 
outside of McAllen, TX, our vehicle came across about 15 recently 
arrived migrants. They approached us and asked us where they could find 
the Border Patrol agents. They wanted to turn themselves in, having 
been coached by their cartel handlers that this was the first step to 
U.S. Government-funded release into America. Our policies are so 
upside-down that the suspects are looking for the officers.
  Nevertheless, U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement Agencies 
are working tirelessly day and night to protect our Nation. 
Understandably, morale is at an all-time low with a Biden 
administration that refuses to give them the tools that they need to 
deal with this crisis.
  Border Patrol can process a maximum of roughly 5,000 migrants a day. 
Right now, they are facing nearly 8,000 migrants a day. And when the 
Biden administration lifts title 42 authority, they fear that the 
number could exceed 15,000 per day.
  Therefore, and unsurprisingly, the constant plea I heard from Border 
Patrol agents was this: We need effective policy, not more agents, not 
more equipment. Bad policies are what have created this incentive to 
cross the border, and eliminating these policies is the only fix. Our 
agents signed up to protect our border, not to facilitate its demise.
  Border agents in Laredo told me that the Migrant Protection 
Protocols, known as MPP, were a perfect illustration of the need for 
policy change. MPP was a policy that required migrants seeking asylum 
in the United States to remain in Mexico until it was determined 
whether or not they were actually entitled to asylum. Most are not.
  When it was implemented in 2019, the agent said it was like flipping 
a switch because this stopped people coming when they knew that they 
wouldn't get in.
  This ``Remain in Mexico'' policy cut illegal border crossings 
dramatically in fiscal year 2020. Yet the Biden administration nixed 
the MPP, and, not surprisingly, border crossings more than quadrupled 
in fiscal year 2021.
  With the help of their media allies, Washington Democrats ignore this 
crisis and they hope that the American people will too. They don't 
travel to

[[Page S2021]]

the border because they don't want to answer for the crisis that they 
have created. They have chosen appeasement of loud, radical immigration 
groups over American security, over American sovereignty.
  President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris haven't seen the 
border stations where the agents sacrifice day and night, mentally and 
physically, battling a crisis that their Departments haven't given them 
the tools to address.
  For many Americans, this crisis seems far away, at least until it is 
too late--until it is their child, their grandchild, their brother and 
sister who become a statistic.
  That is the other thing that I heard constantly from Border Patrol 
and law enforcement agents: We need someone to tell America what is 
happening here.
  With the President and media averting their eyes and abdicating their 
responsibilities, it becomes even more critical to spread the word 
before more American lives are needlessly lost, before more migrants' 
lives are destroyed in the journey or through indentured servitude once 
they arrive, and more communities are damaged beyond repair.
  So what can we do to address this crisis?
  Even though the border cries is worse than ever, the Biden 
administration is voluntarily ending title 42 pandemic-related 
authority for expedited removal.
  The Border Patrol agents I met this weekend believe that this will 
make this recordbreaking crisis substantially worse. Such a surrender 
of American security would be intolerable.
  And there is another health crisis that title 42 is critical to 
battling. The cartels send migrants across at strategic points to bog 
down Border Patrol agents with paperwork processing that takes five 
times longer without title 42. Then they use the resulting enforcement 
gaps to move fentanyl across the border.
  We have to close these enforcement gaps with better policy.
  So I have introduced legislation to add drug smuggling as an 
additional basis for title 42 authority. Overdoses have become an 
epidemic in America. This legislation would allow the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services to use title 42 to combat drug trafficking 
across the border. This bill would give our Border Patrol agents the 
tools they need to quickly remove migrants who illegally cross the 
border, substantially freeing up agents to focus on actually stopping 
drug traffickers.
  More than 100,000 Americans died last year from drug overdoses, many 
from fentanyl coming from across our southern border. We desperately 
need title 42 to fight this drug epidemic. It is a tool that would 
quite literally save American lives in every State in the Union 
immediately.
  So, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from 
further consideration of S. 3959 and the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read 
a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered 
made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, reserving the right to object.
  This is not the right way to get at the fentanyl problem. This gives 
the Secretary permission to shut down all asylum seekers from a country 
on the basis of any type of drug, no matter how much is in possession, 
how frequently that drug is possessed, what country they are coming 
from. We are calling for essentially a complete shutdown of the asylum 
program because there might be fentanyl somewhere. But it also gives 
the Secretary authority to stop asylum seekers coming from any country 
for any drug at any scale.
  Now, title 42 authority is a serious thing. It is a blanket authority 
to block anyone presenting themselves for asylum. We have seen the 
horrific images in Ukraine. We know between 4 and 5 million people are 
already refugees, and we know that the United States, as the 
indispensable Nation, wants to take a leadership role in accommodating 
these refugees in Europe and, if necessary, in the United States.
  People presenting themselves for asylum, escaping their dangerous 
home country--that is actually part of the American dream. That is, in 
a lot of ways, how many of us arrived, right? There may not have been 
this statutory framework, but the principle involved was not just that 
you came from some other place far away to make a better life for 
yourself--sometimes it was that, but sometimes it was to escape the 
pogrom, as was the case with my grandparents, from Kyiv to Odesa, 
actually to Canada, and then to Hawaii.
  And so this authority is no small thing. And to give the Secretary of 
HHS this blanket authority to essentially shut down all asylum seekers 
because we are afraid--appropriately afraid--of a specific drug is just 
a little ham-fisted.
  And I appreciate the Senator's remarks. I think there are better ways 
to work on this, and therefore I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. HAGERTY. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague from 
Hawaii for his remarks, but I want to explain what just happened here.
  My colleague objects, despite the fact that recordbreaking numbers of 
Americans are currently dying from overdoses, fueled by fentanyl coming 
across our border. This legislation is a tool to help save American 
lives. Indeed, 100,000 American lives were lost last year to drug 
overdoses. These lives are being deprived of the American dream 
forever. So Democrats are categorically opposed to commonsense border 
security tools to prevent drug trafficking into America no matter how 
bad the drug overdose numbers get? How much longer will it take to 
change course from the Biden administration policies that have created 
this national security crisis? How much longer will we allow our 
immigration system to be manipulated by a massive transnational 
criminal alliance between the Chinese communists and billion-dollar 
cartels who are shipping deadly quantities of illicit drugs into the 
United States?
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.