Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On MAGA Republicans Pushing Radical Abortion Bans
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on MAGA Republicans pushing for bans on abortion across the country. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:
For decades, overturning Roe and eliminating the right to choose has been the north star for many in the Republican Party, for most it seems, orienting much of their legislation, their candidates, and their nominees they elevate to the judiciary. All too often Republican Senators and legislators, even when they might not agree with the extreme MAGA position on abortion, they go along because they're afraid of the consequences in a primary.
Well, we saw another horrifying consequence of this late last week, when a judge in Arizona upheld a radical abortion ban that dates back to the time of the Civil War, even before Arizona became a state. In the blink of an eye, the right to choose has been practically eliminated in Arizona, a devastating blow to the freedoms of millions of Arizonan women.
The law upheld in Arizona is as cruel and radical as it comes.
It dates all the way back to the 1860s—the 1860s, not 1960s—and provides no exceptions for rape and incest. It tells young women raped or subject to incest you have to carry the baby all the way to term. You have to carry the fetus all the way to term. That's terrible, that's terrible.
It allows for the prosecution of doctors and even the worst, who assist women in accessing an abortion. And in response, the MAGA state Attorney General released a statement saying “We applaud the court for upholding the will of the Legislature.”
MAGA Republicans are making it clear as day exactly where they stand on the right to choose: they want to make freedom of choice extinct across the country, period. The Arizona ruling is hardly the only example of Republican state legislatures in places like Indiana, South Carolina, many others that have already introduced or enacted restrictions with few exceptions for rape and incest.
And look, at the end of the day, this isn’t about states’ rights, despite what Republicans have claimed. This is about getting rid of the right to choose in its entirety. If anyone has any doubts, look no further than the national ban that was introduced right here in the Senate not three weeks ago.
And while Republicans will try to deflect, distort, or mainly distract from their record—they don’t like talking about this because they know the American people are not on their side, but their hard-right MAGA core is, and they’re stuck—the fact is [nearly] every Senate Republican is already on record voting in favor of a national ban, sometimes more than once, here on the floor.
So the contrast has become clear, clear, clear as could be: while Democrats want to protect a woman’s freedom to choose, MAGA Republicans want to take away that right with proposals to ban freedom of choice in its entirety, punish women and doctors for carrying out abortions, even pass bans with no exceptions for rape or incest.
We are seeing it play out across the country, and it is chilling to the bone.
Democrats will keep fighting these MAGA abortion bans, these radical MAGA abortion bans, and make clear to all that we are the party fighting to protect people’s freedoms over their own bodies.
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