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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Texas case that was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, Whole Woman's Health. This morning, I joined hundreds of pro-choice advocates on the steps of the Supreme Court in advance of the oral arguments. They came from all parts of the country with signs such as ``Don't mess with access'' and ``Respect my fundamental human dignity.''
The lead-up to this case was a Texas law, HB2, which imposes unnecessary medical requirements on the State's clinics that provide abortion services.
According to the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, these requirements are not necessary to protect the health of women seeking these services. Rather, these onerous restrictions, known as targeted regulation of abortion providers, or TRAP laws, have only one purpose--to deny abortion services to women.
Three-quarters of clinics in Texas will close if this law is upheld, leaving nearly a million women without adequate access to reproductive services. By making the false claim that restrictions like those passed in Texas will actually protect women's health, opponents of abortion hope to conceal their true agenda, which is putting an end to abortion and women's reproductive choices.
The Texas law is just one more example of a litany of legislation and other attempts to limit a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose. Attacks on reproductive rights, such as misleading undercover videos, violence at clinics, and numerous attempts in Congress to roll back progress on women's health care continued in 2015.
Since Roe v. Wade was decided, State legislatures have passed hundreds of laws to chip away at a woman's right to choose. In the last 4 years alone, States have passed 231 anti-choice laws. Among the most invasive are those requiring ultrasounds of women seeking abortion care, and some of the most ill-conceived laws require providers to give medically unsound information to scare women seeking abortion care. Laws that are not based on medical science and opposed by medical practitioners do not protect a woman's health. No matter how loudly or how often these arguments--or these claims--are repeated, they are lies. Lies repeated do not become truths.
While these restrictive laws impact all women, they impact minority and lower income women most. For example, the Texas law will result in the closure of more and more provider clinics. Women in Texas will have to travel farther and farther to get to open clinics. Women who have limited resources to travel for needed services or cannot afford to take time from work to travel these long distances are the most negatively impacted by TRAP laws.
Why do women need to be protected from being able to access the reproductive services they need and choose? Fundamentally, what is the point of a constitutional right if one is unable to exercise that right? I cannot think of any other constitutionally protected right that has seen so many restrictions placed upon it, except perhaps the right to vote, but that is a subject for another speech.
It is more than ironic that while many of our anti-choice colleagues vehemently speak out in support of constitutional rights, when it comes to women's bodies and reproductive choice, they are all too willing to set aside their constitutional principles to invade those fundamental rights. Neither Congress nor the States have a right to do that.
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