[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 37 (Thursday, February 29, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S1055]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Reproductive Rights

  Mr. President, overturning Roe v. Wade, as outrageous and devastating 
as it was, was never going to be the end for Republicans. They knew 
that, and we knew that because they weren't exactly keeping it a 
secret.
  Except there was a set of sort of center-right and even center-left 
Republicans and pundits who swore privately that it wouldn't open the 
floodgates to an even greater assault on women's reproductive freedoms. 
They scoffed at even the possibility of the very kinds of outcomes that 
we are seeing playing out across the country today--like last week, 
when the Alabama Supreme Court effectively banned IVF and left people 
who are trying to start a family with nowhere to turn.
  It turns out people were right to be worried, and one of the worst 
infirmities in this town is that somehow--somehow--you are considered 
savvy, thoughtful, a centrist, an institutionalist if you never, ever 
freak out.
  ``Everything is going to be fine.''
  Everything is always going to be fine. He is not going to try to 
overturn the results of this election. They are not going to go through 
with overturning Roe v. Wade. Every savvy person at every cocktail hour 
that I don't attend is always telling us to chill out.
  But now it is happening. They went through with it. They repealed 
Roe, and all of the worst-case scenarios from all of the organizations 
that pushed for reproductive freedom were deemed right.
  I still remember the great Senator from the State of Colorado who 
made as an emphasis in his reelection campaign women's reproductive 
freedom. Do you know what everybody called him on the Republican side? 
Not Mark Udall--Mark Uterus. They thought that was hilarious. Look at 
this weird focus on women's reproductive freedoms. And he sat there and 
said: But look, if the Supreme Court changes hands, then Roe is in 
peril.
  Everyone was told to chill out. They made fun of this U.S. Senator 
for predicting the future.
  People were right to be worried. Extreme Republicans are going after 
women and reproductive freedoms through every way that they can--in 
Congress, in statehouses, in the Supreme Court, and in State courts.
  Gutting Roe was never going to be enough; it was a gateway to all-out 
war. Right now, millions of women in America are paying the price. They 
are terrified of what they can and cannot do and what may or may not 
land them in prison. It is not a crime to start a family, but now it 
is. It is not a crime to dispose of a nonviable embryo in a lab, but 
Republicans have made sure that it is a crime.
  Do you know how hard it is to do IVF? Everybody who is at least my 
age knows somebody who had a struggle getting pregnant, and that thing 
is emotionally and physically and financially exhausting. I have never 
thought of IVF through a partisan lens. I honestly hadn't. It didn't 
occur to me that they were going to go after people actually trying to 
get pregnant.
  This is not about babies and life and families. This is about 
punishing women. This is about taking away their autonomy. This is 
their objective.
  You know, 5 years ago, you might have come to me, and if I had made 
this kind of speech, you would have been like: Whoa, that is a little 
much, buddy. They are not going to do that.
  They did that. They are still doing that. Republicans in Congress 
were quick to dismiss it. They even got a memo from their campaign 
committee to distance themselves from the very policies that they 
enabled for literally decades. They will try to on the one hand say 
they are for IVF but on the floor block legislation to enable IVF, and 
support fetal personhood legislation and block bills to protect IVF 
federally. They did it yesterday. So no one is fooled.
  I know--and the Senator from Connecticut and I have been talking 
about this--sometimes it is very difficult to see through the fog on 
policy. On this one, it is not unclear who did what and what they are 
in the middle of doing. There is nothing pro-life about ripping away 
the only options available for someone trying to have a kid. There is 
nothing pro-life about jeopardizing a woman's life by forcing her to 
carry a nonviable pregnancy to term. That is not a principled belief; 
that is insanity. It is actively harming an innocent person.
  In the wake of last week's decision, fertility clinics in Alabama are 
abruptly pulling the plug on IVF treatments because they are afraid of 
being prosecuted. That is leaving people wondering if they will be able 
to have a kid or not.
  Not only can they not go through the process in Alabama, they can't 
even move their embryos because they are afraid of getting in legal 
trouble. They can't even move their embryos, right? Like, this was 
supposed to be--in the most optimistic scenario as well, laboratories 
of democracy, States can do whatever they want. You can't even take 
your own embryos and move them to another place where IVF is legal. Say 
you are a couple in Birmingham close to completing the IVF process. 
Suddenly, you can't continue it in your home State, and you don't have 
the ability to finish it somewhere else either. Overnight, these 
patients are left without options, with no notice and no recourse.
  The human implications of the Alabama Supreme Court decision are as 
obvious as they are devastating, but it is also important to be crystal 
clear about how we got here politically, because this decision is not 
an anomaly. It is not a fringe view held by a few whacky judges in a 
single State. It is the direct result of a decades-long, organized, 
national effort by Republican hardliners to dismantle reproductive 
freedoms that were, until recently, the law of the land. They have 
shown zero restraint in going after people's rights, and there is no 
reason to believe that they are going to stop anytime soon. They will 
not. They did this, and they want more, and they have a plan. This is 
on them. This record is theirs to own.