[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7816-S7817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 5276

  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from 
further consideration of S. 5276 and that the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration; further, 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 Mississippi.
  Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Madam President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Illinois.
  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, my daughter Abigail, my oldest 
daughter, just turned 8. She is silly and smart and gives the best hugs 
you could ever imagine. She has big dreams, and if you have ever met 
her, you just know that she will reach them. She has decided that one 
day she is going to become an engineer or an Army nurse. She wants to 
build things, and she wants to help people. That is it.
  My younger daughter, Maile Pearl, is 4\1/2\, with just about the most 
contagious laugh I have ever heard.
  My girls are my everything, and for them, I would do anything, but 
Abigail and Maile might never have been born if it were not for the 
basic reproductive rights Americans have been depending on for nearly 
half a century. I might never have had my beautiful, incredible, drive-
me-crazy, yet-I-love-them-infinitely girls if Roe v. Wade had not paved 
the way for women to make their own healthcare decisions, as I was only 
able to get pregnant through IVF, in vitro fertilization.
  Because of IVF, I get to experience all the joys and chaos of 
motherhood. Because of IVF, my husband and I aren't just ``Tammy and 
Bryan''; we are ``Mommy and Daddy.'' Because of IVF, we are a family, 
and my heart is whole.
  Tragically, that future--that family, that fervently hoped-for 
dream--is now in danger for millions of would-be parents across the 
country, as the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe has 
Republicans plotting to push forward new policy that would go even 
further toward controlling women's bodies, including plans that could 
effectively ban fertility treatments like IVF.
  We know that because they told us, because they said the quiet part 
out loud. One anti-choice group even admitted to GOP legislators that 
they would consider figuring out how to go after IVF treatments ``next 
year, 2 years from now, 3 years from now.''
  If you are thinking that this makes no sense, you are right. You are 
not misunderstanding anything. You are not missing something. It is the 
ultimate nightmarish blend of hypocrisy and misogyny that you think it 
is.
  The very people who claim to be defending family values are actively 
shouldering policies that would prevent millions of Americans from 
starting families.
  In the most extreme version, they are pushing the kind of so-called 
personhood bills that paint women undergoing IVF as criminals and our 
doctors as killers, even as we are trying everything we can to create 
life.
  The thing is, they craft this kind of policy carefully, tactically. 
They are strategic about every word they use, about every comma they 
place, winking to their political base all the while.
  Their so-called personhood bills don't necessarily say: Guess what, 
big news. We are going to ban IVF, full stop. What they say is: Hey, 
we're not completely, totally, fully opposed to IVF, per se. But we 
definitely won't let you implant multiple fertilized eggs at once. They 
say: You can have this expensive, intensive procedure still, but you 
can only implant one embryo at a time--a cruelly clever way of 
effectively preventing people from trying IVF without actually spelling 
it out verbatim.
  The process relies on implanting multiple embryos at once to give 
women the best shot of becoming pregnant and carrying a child to term. 
So implanting only one per round would be prohibitively expensive, not 
to mention emotionally devastating for so many.
  Personhood: This policy could also ban dilation and curettage, or 
D&C,

[[Page S7817]]

after an incredibly short time, sometimes at just 6 weeks. D&C is the 
medical procedure necessary to safely remove an unviable embryo and 
lining of the uterus so women can eventually try again to get pregnant.
  So what happens if a woman miscarries after that 6-week mark? What 
happens to women like me who miscarried at 9 weeks? If that kind of 
policy had been in place in that horrible, most searingly painful 
moment in my life when I learned that my pregnancy wasn't viable, I 
would have been kept from the medical care I desperately needed--care 
that allowed me to undergo another round of IVF after that D&C 
procedure was completed, care that allowed me eventually to get 
pregnant with my rainbow daughter, Maile.
  Over the past 6 years that I have served in the Senate, I have gotten 
to know some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle quite 
well. Today, I come to the floor to ask those Republican colleagues a 
simple question: Think back to that stretch of time before you became a 
parent. Imagine that the only way you or your partner could get 
pregnant was through IVF. Then imagine that some politicians deciding 
that appealing to the most fringe subset of their base was worth 
robbing you of your dream of having a child, was worth stealing that 
moment we all had when we locked eyes with our newborns for the first 
time. How would that feel? How would that sit with you?
  If it so happens that you didn't struggle with infertility, that you 
didn't need a little medical help to have your child, then I am happy 
for you, truly. I can't tell you how fortunate you are. But if through 
sheer luck you won that proverbial lottery, how could you then stomach 
spending your time robbing other Americans, your own constituents, of 
the joy you have been lucky enough to experience?
  No. No. No. No.
  In this scary, precarious post-Dobbs world, we cannot risk one more 
State getting one inch closer to stripping one more person of the right 
to build their family, how they choose, when they choose.
  That is why today, I ask my colleagues to pass with unanimous consent 
my Right to Build Families Act, which would ensure that every 
American's fundamental right to become a parent via IVF is actually, 
truly protected, regardless of a person's ZIP Code.
  My bill would keep States from banning assisted reproductive 
technology--known as ART--including IVF. It would protect healthcare 
providers who provide ART or related counseling and would allow the 
Department of Justice to pursue civil action against States that 
violate this legislation because no one should feel that someone else's 
religious beliefs or partisan slants could rob her of her chance to get 
pregnant, and no doctor should have to risk becoming a criminal in 
their State's eyes just for providing women the healthcare they need to 
start families.
  Let's be very clear. If you believe in basic logic, then you know 
that there is no chance that these kinds of extremist Republicans have 
any right to call themselves pro-life.
  If they were pro-life, they would do something about the number of 
first graders murdered in their classrooms by military-style assault 
weapons every year.
  If they were pro-life, they would spend even an ounce of energy 
trying to staunch the maternal mortality crisis that has killed a 
tragic number of Black and Brown women.
  If they cared about protecting life on this planet, they would do 
something about our planet dying. They would stop stripping basic 
healthcare from single parents working double shifts. They would stop 
trying to rip Social Security away from grandma and grandpa. If they 
cared about fostering life maybe--I don't know, maybe, just maybe--they 
wouldn't try to stop women like me from creating it. They wouldn't 
throw around words like manslaughter, when all we want is to become 
mothers.
  Look, there are lots of really complicated, nuanced issues that we 
debate in this Chamber. This just isn't one of them.
  One in four women married to men have difficulty getting pregnant or 
carrying a pregnancy to term, a stat that doesn't include the LGBTQ+ 
couples or partnerless Americans who also need the help of ART to grow 
families.
  One in four--that is one in four blue States, one in four red States, 
battleground States, one in four of the biggest cities and the smallest 
of rural towns, one in four of the wealthiest and the poorest ZIP 
Codes.
  Infertility doesn't discriminate. It doesn't distinguish. It doesn't 
see party lines or State lines.
  So to my Republican colleagues, please: Think about how many women 
that 25 percent equates to be in your State, women willing to go 
through expensive, painful medical procedures just for a chance to 
experience the smallest, most banal moments of parenthood, just to have 
a newborn to swaddle, a toddler whose shoes to tie, a baby whose diaper 
to change.
  Think about these constituents of yours. If you believe that they 
have the right to be called ``Mom'' without also being painted as a 
criminal, then all you have to do to prove it is to help me defend this 
most basic right. It is that simple. It is that easy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Minnesota.

                          ____________________