Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Hard-Right Agenda Restricting Reproductive Care And Jeopardizing Vital Access To IVF

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the floor regarding the actions of hard-right Republicans that have led to less access to reproductive care across the country including the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision on IVF. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks which can also be viewed here:

Following the Alabama Supreme Court’s stunningly radical opinion jeopardizing in vitro fertilization, Democrats are taking action to protect every American’s right to IVF.

I just returned from a press conference with Senators Duckworth, Murray, and several other of my Democratic colleagues, Senators Klobuchar and Baldwin, expressing our support for protecting the right to reproductive technology like IVF.

I commend Senators Duckworth and Murray for their leadership on this issue, and I strongly support their efforts to safeguard and strengthen IVF access for all Americans.

But make no mistake about it: 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.

And make no mistake about it: there will be other awful restrictive decisions emanating from the Dobbs decision.

Just like the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, there is only one word to describe last week’s Alabama Supreme Court Decision: shameful.

It’s shameful that families who are trying to get pregnant now have to worry that access to in vitro fertilization will be taken away.

It’s shameful that in the twenty-first century, women have to travel hundreds of miles for basic health care and that doctors fear criminal prosecution for just doing their jobs.

It’s is shameful that the United States has become an embarrassment to the world when it comes to reproductive freedom.

And it’s especially shameful that hard-right Republicans – who have spent decades packing our courts with hard-right judges who have called for national abortion bans – are now trying to backpedal and sound reasonable and supportive of IVF. But that backpedaling won’t last. It’s as if  they lit a match, the house is now on fire, and they ask, why is that house on fire? They did everything to lead up to this, we know that.

So, make no mistake: the shameful state of women’s health care and reproductive freedoms is the product of the hard-right Republican agenda.

The minority – the small minority – in this country who are hard-right are very happy today with this decision, but no one else in America is. The American people watched for decades as the hard-right led a relentless campaign against the fundamental right to choose. Republicans aren’t fooling anyone by now trying to run away from their record.

Republicans own the disasters of Roe v. Wade. Republicans own what happened in Alabama. Republicans will own the consequences.

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