Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Republicans’ Golden Age For The Extreme Anti-Choice Movement

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on 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:

Under President Trump, it will be a golden age for the extreme anti-choice movement.

The bill we’re voting on today, the Republicans’ so-called Born Alive bill, is as pernicious as they come. It attacks women’s health care using false narratives and outright fear-mongering, and it 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 situation targeted by this bill is one of the most heartbreaking moments a woman could ever encounter, the agonizing choice of having to end care when serious and rare complications arise in pregnancy. It is moments like this where we should support women and doctors most, not use them as political football as this bill does so heartlessly.

Remember when Republicans claimed that they would leave the issue of choice to the states? Remember that? That's out the window! This bill is a metaphor for what’s to come: an emboldened, extremist anti-choice resurgence, far, far further to the right than the American people are.

Here’s a message to my Republican colleagues: today would be a great day for Senate Republicans to do something lowering the costs of groceries, instead of attacking women’s reproductive care.

It would be a great day for Senate Republicans to do something to make prescription drugs more affordable.

It would be a great day for Senate Republicans to do something to help Americans trying to buy a home.

Instead of lowering costs, Senate Republicans are putting their energy into controlling women’s health care. This is not what the American people signed up for.

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