The full press conference can be viewed here.
Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) held a press conference to recommit to the fight for full access to women’s healthcare. This came three years to the day since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – which overturned Roe v Wade and decades of precedent – and decimated women’s access to healthcare across the United States.
The full press conference can be viewed here and Senator Blunt Rochester’s full remarks, as delivered, are below:
Thank you, Senator Baldwin, and please give her a round of applause for leading this charge. Thank you, Senator.
Leader Schumer, my Democratic colleagues, to each of the champions that are in this room, and to our storytellers, it is an honor to be standing with you today.
Three years ago today, the Supreme Court reversed Roe versus Wade and 60 years of precedent. Women went to sleep on June 23rd, 2022, and woke up on June 24th with fewer rights than our mothers and our grandmothers.
And that was the result of decades-long efforts by conservative Republicans to take away our reproductive freedoms. They claimed that they wanted to leave access to abortion to the states, but the Trump Administration — and extremist Republicans across the nation — really wanted one thing: a national abortion ban. And in case you haven’t noticed it, the pieces of this puzzle have been coming together quietly.
But the puzzle is not complete. They froze Title X funding for clinics, fired reproductive health care experts, restricted access to… [inaudible] look I can’t even say it, I say it every day: mifepristone, the abortion pill, and so much more.
All while, this week, they try to pass a bill that would strip Medicaid away from millions of Americans. And let’s be clear: Medicaid covers about 40 percent of the births in this country. Which means they’re trying to cut off funding for healthy births, while limiting health care options available to all of us.
Because what is abortion care? It is healthcare.
And who will be hurt the most by this effort?
Young women.
Poor women.
Women in rural areas.
And women of color.
And I know this intimately. Because as Senator Baldwin talked about a constituent of hers, I experienced this personally, having my daughter-in-law, on Christmas morning a few years ago, her water broke prematurely, we showed up at a hospital, and they sent her home without the care that she needed. Because I knew about our maternal mortality crisis, I was like, “we’re not stopping here.” And we took her to another place, she was able to get the care she needed, and a year later, my granddaughter was born. Because of IVF.
So, we know this personally. We know this intimately. For Black women and brown women, we also know that we are disproportionately impacted. We have higher maternal mortality rates. We have higher reproductive cancer rates. We have higher rates of preterm births. This is personal. This is personal.
And Republicans cannot say that they are the party of freedom and then tell us what to do with our bodies. They can’t be – he can’t be the fertilization president, Mr. Trump, but then you wanna make it more dangerous for people to have babies. You can’t claim you’re the party of strong economic growth, but you’re cutting Medicaid, food assistance, childcare – making it harder for women to participate in the workforce. All to get tax breaks to people who already have access to all of these things.
So today, we want the American people to know that we have not forgotten where we started three years ago. And that, to our conservative Republicans across the country who are watching, we see you. We see what you’re doing. It may be quiet, but we see it. We see what you’re doing. We see the puzzle of a national abortion ban that you are assembling, and we’re gonna do everything in our power, not just to fight now, but we’re gonna be ready to push the button when it’s time to go and restore our freedoms and our rights.
So, as Democrats, and as advocates, we’re about to put the pieces back in the box.
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Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the United States Senate where she serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.