[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 5, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1096-S1097]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, now on over-the-counter birth control, as 
hard-right Republicans continue their all-out assault on reproductive 
rights, the American people just received some very big news: The 
first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill is headed to stores 
later this month.
  The introduction of a safe, effective, over-the-counter birth control 
pill is a promising step toward improving access to contraception. The 
pill, Opill, will be available very soon at major stores and pharmacies 
and online, for anyone to buy without needing a prescription. It will 
be a new avenue for Americans to access reproductive care, so critical 
today as reproductive care comes under greater attack by the hard 
right.

  Hard-right Republicans have shown they have no restraint when it 
comes to ripping away reproductive rights after the disastrous Dobbs 
decision. Whether it is pushing for a national abortion ban, as the 
hard right has been doing for decades; or blocking promotions of 
hundreds of military officers in protest of women in the military 
getting access to reproductive care, as one Republican Senator did 
repeatedly last year; or even threatening access to in vitro 
fertilization, as the Republican majority Alabama Supreme Court did, 
followed by Senate Republicans blocking legislation to protect IVF last 
week, Republicans have made it beyond clear they have not yielded one 
bit in their radical anti-women, anti-choice agenda.

[[Page S1097]]

  That is why this historic announcement of an over-the-counter birth 
control pill is so important. It lands a blow against those who are 
trying so desperately to limit access to reproductive care.
  Democrats, meanwhile, will continue fighting to make sure everyone 
who needs birth control can get it and to improve women's healthcare, 
women's access to healthcare, and the affordability of healthcare.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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