Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Ahead Of Today’s Vote To Advance Republicans’ Extreme Anti-Choice Legislation

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor ahead of today’s vote to advance the Republican-led Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which punishes medical professionals and American women and pushes an extreme anti-choice agenda. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today’s vote on Senate Republicans’ so-called Born Alive bill makes one thing clear: under President Trump, it will be a golden age, but for the extreme, anti-choice movement.

This bill is the very definition of pernicious: it attacks women’s health care using false narratives and outright fear-mongering, and adds more legal risk for doctors on something that is already illegal.

So much of the hard-right’s anti-choice agenda is pushed, frankly, by people who have little to no understanding of what women go through when they are pregnant.

The scenario targeted by this bill is one of the most heartbreaking moments that a woman could ever encounter, the agonizing choice of having to end care when serious and rare complications arise in pregnancy. And at that moment of agony, this bill cruelly substitutes the judgment of qualified medical professionals, and the wishes of millions of families, and allows ultra-right ideology to dictate what they do.

Women should be supported and trusted when faced with serious pregnancy complications. This is when male politicians should step up and support women, not use them as political footballs, as this bill so heartlessly does.

And if anything, this bill is a metaphor for what’s to come: an emboldened, extremist anti-choice resurgence further to the right of where most people are, even where most Republicans are.

Remember when Republicans said this issue would be left to the states?

Both President Trump and our Republican colleagues said, "don't worry, we are going to leave this to the states." That's not what this bill does.

That's what we're going to see over and over again—promises made during the campaign are just broken. And this one, two days after Donald Trump is inaugurated as President, it's no longer left to the states.

And any promise that people made—"We're going to leave things to women and their doctors"—that’s out the window!

With this bill, and again, we're going to see that repeated over and over again. Not left to the states, but rather imposed by some politicians here in Washington on women across America, and not respecting the rights of women and their doctors be and their families.

Here’s my message to my Republican colleagues: instead of attacking reproductive care, today would be a great day for Senate Republicans to do something to lower the cost of groceries, or prescription drugs, or helping Americans buy a home.

It would also be a great day for Senate Republicans to trust women and leave their healthcare choices up to them, but they're not doing that.

###