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"The American people want to know where their senators stand on freedom of choice," said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In another display of GOP lawmakers' opposition to reproductive rights, U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the Reproductive Freedom for Women Act.
Introduced last month by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the bill states that "the protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade... should be restored and built upon, moving towards a future where there is reproductive freedom for all."
The bill also acknowledges Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 ruling that reversedRoe, the decision that had affirmed the right to abortion until viability since 1973. Dobbs set off a fresh wave of efforts to impose devastating new restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
"If Republicans are going to force women to stay pregnant, we are going to force them to be honest with the American people about their extreme position. And, by the way, Democrats are going to keep fighting to restore the rights the American people have been so clear that they want back," Murray said on the Senate floor before Wednesday's vote.
The vote was 49-44, mostly along party lines. Seven senators were not present, and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) were the only Republicans who supported holding a final vote on the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) changed his vote to "no" so he can bring the bill back up at a later date.
Wednesday's vote followed Republicans blocking bills on in vitro fertilization (IVF) and contraception last month. It also came after the GOP blocked three bills on Tuesday, which aimed to affirm the freedom to cross state lines for abortion care, protect doctors providing legal abortions from being punished for treating patients from other states, and support training for more providers.
"We know where the American people stand on the freedom of choice: Over 80% of Americans—including two-thirds of Republicans—agree that healthcare decisions including abortion should be between a woman and her doctor," Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
"But Americans are rightfully worried that reproductive rights are becoming extinct in this country. They see what's happening at the Supreme Court. They see the attacks on women's rights in states like Texas and Florida and Alabama and Idaho and beyond," he continued. "The American people want to know where their senators stand on freedom of choice."
The Senate majority leader also called out former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face embattled Democratic President Joe Biden in November.
While Trump's recognition that rolling back reproductive freedom is unpopular is reportedly what led to changes in the Republican Party's 2024 policy platform, campaigners and legal experts have warned this week that the final language is still incredibly threatening and the GOP can't be trusted on this issue.
The White House said Tuesday that "the administration strongly supports Senate passage" of the bill and "will continue to work with Congress to defend reproductive freedom once and for all."
The statement also called out the GOP, saying that "Republican elected officials' extreme agenda is putting women's health and lives at risk and unleashing chaos and cruelty across America."
After the vote Wednesday, Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that "we're grateful to Sen. Murray, Leader Schumer, and our champions in the Senate for continuing to hold Republicans' feet to the fire for the damage they've done to reproductive freedom."
She added that "the GOP must be held accountable for the abortion bans they've helped orchestrate and refuse to back down from—and this November, they will be voted out of office."
Sen. Patty Murray described the event as "a close accounting of the trauma Republicans are inflicting on women and families across our country, and the damage they are doing to basic reproductive healthcare."
Abortion rights advocates in the U.S. Senate held a Tuesday hearing highlighting the impacts of healthcare bans imposed by the GOP, particularly since the Supreme Court's June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade.
The hearing—titled, "The Assault on Women's Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Healthcare Nightmare Across America"—was officially hosted by Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but he kicked it off by explaining why he was turning things over to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the panel's former leader.
"Given the subject matter I think it's appropriate for a woman to chair this important hearing and this is an issue that Sen. Murray has been deeply and passionately involved in for many, many years," Sanders said, connecting the fight for abortion access to women's battles for other basic rights, including equal pay and political representation. "Sen. Murray, the gavel is yours."
Murray described the hearing as "a close accounting of the trauma Republicans are inflicting on women and families across our country, and the damage they are doing to basic reproductive healthcare through their horrific anti-abortion crusade."
With Republican politicians' recently implemented abortion bans and restrictions, "they have told women on no uncertain terms, 'You don't control your body, we do.' That is horrifying," she said. "The consequences of the post-Dobbs abortion bans are so much broader and so much more devastating than any one story or hearing can ever do justice."
Murray mentioned a story shared by Dr. Neelima Sukhavasi last month when Louisiana lawmakers were considering whether to add rape and incest exceptions to the state's strict abortion ban (they didn't). Recalling a rape survivor giving birth, the OB-GYN said, "One of these teenagers delivered a baby while clutching a Teddy Bear—and that's an image that once you see that, you can't unsee it."
The senator stressed that "these nightmares are happening across our country and there are so many other stories that go untold."
"It is harrowing to think that we live in a reality where forced pregnancy has become so widespread and so rampant that only the most dystopian stories get national attention—but the stories of all the other women who are confronted by these bans, their pain, their heartbreak, their anger and fear, are also horrific, valid, and an important part of the conversation," she continued. "A forced pregnancy does not have to make headlines to make someone's life a living hell."
The committee heard from two Physicians for Reproductive Health fellows who provide abortion care—Drs. Nisha Verma of Georgia and Allison Linton, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin—as well as Guttmacher Institute acting co-CEO Destiny Lopez and Madysyn Anderson, a patient who had to leave her home in Houston, Texas to end a pregnancy.
The panel also heard from two witnesses called by Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroenterologist who calls himself "unapologetically pro-life": Indiana-based Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and Melissa Ohden, founder and CEO of the Abortion Survivors Network.
Anderson was the first to provide testimony. She spoke about finding out she was pregnant during her senior year at the University of Houston, shortly after a breakup. She made an appointment at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic, where she found out she was 11 weeks pregnant—too far along to get an abortion in Texas, even before the Dobbs decision.
"I called 20 different clinics after my first visit. Yes, 20. I called surrounding states and even as far as the Dakotas. No one could see me right away. The earliest I could be seen was two weeks later at Jackson Women's Health Organization in Mississippi," she said. "My dad took off work and we drove 720 miles and spent 13 hours on the road. We spent five hours in a hotel trying to sleep before my first appointment just to turn right around and go back home."
Because of Mississippi laws at the time, she had to make another trip for the procedure. In addition to missing hours of work and an internship—and having to disclose the reason to her boss and professors—Anderson had to pay $2,850 for her appointments and travel. She said that "there is no dollar value I can put on the stress of managing everything."
As of May 1, 14 U.S. states had total abortion bans and 27 states had prohibitions based on gestational duration, according to Lopez's group, which tracks reproductive rights policies. Some states are going even further. Louisiana, for example, recently passed a law to classify two drugs used in medication abortions—mifepristone and misoprostol—as controlled dangerous substances, a move opposed by hundreds of healthcare providers.
Lopez emphasized that the drugs are "safe and effective," and framed the Louisiana law as "simply an effort to make abortion more difficult to attain," which she said will impact "folks who are already marginalized" by our healthcare system.
Verma similarly stressed that "medication abortion is incredibly safe and effective" and warned of misinformation shared by people including Cassidy's witnesses about topics such as so-called "abortion reversal," recalling one study that had to be stopped early because participants were experiencing dangerous bleeding.
The doctors talked about a range of other related issues including difficulties treating patients post-Dobbs; the fact that, as Linton put it, "we already have maternity care deserts" and they are expected to increase, as doctors flee states with restrictions; and, Verma noted, the distances that people are forced to travel for abortion care are "getting further and further."
The Supreme Court—whose makeup remains the same as when the Dobbs decision was handed down—is currently weighing two cases that could further restrict abortion care nationwide: one involving mifepristone and another regarding whether abortions are considered "necessary stabilizing treatment" for patients experiencing emergencies.
In Congress, Republicans continue to push for restrictions on abortion—and advocates warn that in vitro fertilization and contraception are also at risk. Reproductive rights are also dominating the contest for the White House, with former GOP President Donald Trump bragging about the role he played in reversing Roe.
Democratic President Joe Biden, meanwhile, continues to emphasize that he supports abortion rights. Murray made clear during Tuesday's hearing that party members are determined to keep fighting for reproductive freedom.
The divided Senate is set to vote Wednesday on the Right to Contraception Act. Speaking after the hearing, Murray said that "the message here is a simple one: Do you support the right to contraception, or not? The vast majority of Americans absolutely do. Overwhelmingly! But what about Republicans?"
"One of the Republican witnesses at our hearing this morning—someone Republicans chose to bring in to represent their arguments—is actively working to ban basic forms of contraception," she noted. "That should tell you a lot."
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray stressed the need to show "how extreme right-wing abortion bans and restrictions on reproductive healthcare have endangered women, hurt families, and rolled back rights."
It's been nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade, triggering a fresh wave of Republican restrictions on abortion at the state level—the topic of a Senate hearing that progressive leaders are planning for next week.
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the panel's former leader, announced Wednesday that the hearing—titled, "The Assault on Women's Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Healthcare Nightmare Across America"—will be held on June 4 at 10:00 am ET.
While the witness list has not been released yet, Sanders and Murray previewed the event in a joint statement, saying that "in the two years since Roe was overturned, Republican abortion bans have created a full-blown healthcare crisis—forcing providers to close their doors and shut down their practices, putting women's lives in danger, decimating access to maternal healthcare, and forcing women to remain pregnant, no matter their circumstances."
The June 2022 majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and "Republican abortion bans have forced women to leave their states under duress or wait until they are near death to receive care," the pair noted. "Providers have been forced to make gut-wrenching decisions about whether to risk jail time to help a woman access the healthcare she needs."
As of May 1, just nine states and Washington, D.C. don't ban abortion or impose gestational limits, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That means 41 states have restrictions: 14 have total bans; seven ban abortion at or before 18 weeks; and 20 ban it after 18 weeks. Some states have exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the pregnant person—though providers and patients have stressed that such policies often don't actually help those seeking care.
"The harm of Dobbs has extended far beyond states with extreme abortion bans" Sanders and Murray pointed out. "In places where abortion remains legal, women are waiting longer for care and providers are struggling to keep up with a dramatically increased patient load."
As Common Dreamsreported last week, after Florida's six-week ban went into effect at the beginning of this month, wait times increased at 30% of the abortion clinics in the closest states and the driving distance for the average Floridian increased by nearly 30 times to 590 miles.
The influx of "healthcare refugees" is impacting places like Illinois, where Planned Parenthood saw its out-of-state patients jump from about 6% to nearly a third each month in the wake of Dobbs. Jennifer Welch, the provider's president and CEO, said in December 2022 that "the number of patients from other states forced to travel to our health centers is at a historic high."
As the GOP has worked to further restrict reproductive freedom since Dobbs, protecting and expanding such rights has become a top priority for voters across the country. For the 2024 cycle, campaigners in several states are focused on ballot measures affirming the right to abortion and other care, while Democratic President Joe Biden and the presumed Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, have campaigned on their respective records.
Though some of Biden's public statements have frustrated rights advocates, the president supports access to abortion care. Trump, meanwhile, has both bragged about appointing three of the six justices who reversed Roe but also recognized the risks of openly backing the most extreme bans—as his allies plot major attacks on reproductive rights if he returns to office.
"The threats to a woman's right to make her own decisions about her body and her future keep coming—right now Republicans are working to rip away access to safe medication abortion, block women from receiving emergency abortion care that could save their lives, ban abortion nationwide, and restrict access to contraception," Sanders and Murray warned.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to soon rule on one case that could restrict access to mifepristone, a medication commonly used for abortions, and another case about whether abortion care is included in the "necessary stabilizing treatment" that emergency healthcare departments are required to provide under federal law, as the Biden administration argues.
"And Republican attacks on basic healthcare are only escalating," Sanders and Murray said. "The anti-abortion movement has shown its cruelty and utter disregard for women's lives again and again, and it is essential that we use every opportunity to continue to make clear exactly how extreme right-wing abortion bans and restrictions on reproductive healthcare have endangered women, hurt families, and rolled back rights."
"We must continue to shine a light on the living nightmare extreme right-wing abortion bans and other healthcare restrictions have been for women across the country," they concluded, "and do everything we can to restore every woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions."