Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Announcing Senate Vote To Codify Roe v. Wade Following Reported Roberts Court Decision To Overturn Settled Law

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding media reports of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

This is a dark and disturbing morning for America. Last night, a report disclosed that a conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and uproot decades of precedent affirming a woman’s right to an abortion.

If this report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years – not just on women, but on all Americans. Under this decision, our children will have fewer rights than their parents.

The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade will go down as an abomination, one of the worst, most damaging decisions in modern history. 

Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation – all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for over half a century.

The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump.  

Every Republican senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for trump justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people.

I’ll have more to say later this morning. But I want to make three things clear.

First: now that the Court is poised to strike down Roe, it is my intention for the Senate to hold a vote on legislation to codify the right to an abortion in law.

Second: a vote on this legislation is not an abstract exercise; this is as urgent and real as it gets. We will vote to protect a women’s right to choose and every American is going to see which side every senator stands.

Every American is going to see on which side every Senator stands.

Third, to the American people I say this: the elections this November will have consequences, because the rights of a hundred million women are now on the ballot.

To help fight this court’s awful decision, I urge every American to make their voices heard this week and this year.

I urge Americans to call their members, to write their members, to email their members, to text their members, and most of all to cast their ballots.

Make no mistake: the blame for this decision falls squarely on Republican Senators and the Senate Republicans as a whole, who spent years pushing extremist judges, spent years confirming three far-right justices to the supreme court, but who claimed somehow this day would never come.

But this day has come, and we will fight it all the way. 

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