Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Hard-Right Agenda And The Alabama Supreme Court Jeopardizing Access To In Vitro Fertilization

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the floor to regarding the consequences of MAGA Republicans’ drive to overturn Roe and how it led to the Alabama Supreme Court’s radical opinion restricting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other forms of fertility care.  Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks which can also be viewed here:

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court handed down a stunningly radical opinion jeopardizing access to in vitro fertilization and other forms of fertility care.

The decision by the Alabama court is utterly revolting. The damage it will cause women and doctors and families is both heartbreaking and enraging.

And let’s not kid ourselves: this didn’t happen in a vacuum. What happened in Alabama is a direct consequence – a direct consequence – of the hard-right MAGA Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Thanks to MAGA extremism, today the United States is an embarrassment to the world when it comes to reproductive freedom. Here in the twenty-first century, we live in a country where women have to travel hundreds of miles for basic health care, where doctors fear criminal prosecution for just doing their jobs, where some Republican state legislators want to police women’s movements, and where families who want to get pregnant are worried that even in vitro fertilization will be taken away.

Now, we’ve seen a lot of desperate backpedaling over the past few days from Republicans trying to sound reasonable and supportive on procedures like IVF, because it’s dawning on them that their agenda is horribly unpopular with most Americans.

But let us be very clear: Republicans who have spent decades packing our courts with hard-right judges, who have called for national abortion bans, deserve zero benefit of the doubt now that the consequences of their agenda are sinking in.

The shameful state of women’s health care and women’s health care freedoms is a product of the hard-right Republican agenda.

Republicans own what happened in Alabama. Let me repeat that: Republicans own what happened in Alabama.

Republicans own the disasters of Roe v. Wade. And Republicans will learn when it comes to attacks on their personal freedoms, the American people do not easily forget.

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