Tax Convention with Chile

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question about how long he plans to speak, just for the convenience of others?

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor to support my colleague and friend Senator Cortez Masto in her efforts to bring this legislation not only to the floor but to passage.

This has been a long, long trail of broken promises and false assertions. It began with the broken promises and false assertions of judicial nominees who came before the Judiciary Committee to assure us that the protections of Roe v. Wade were a precedent and that they would respect precedent. Of course, that all evaporated.

We then heard the argument that this was ``States' rights.'' My friend from Utah may not like the phrase, but it is one that his side has used over and over and over again. Call it States' rights or call it federalism, the notion was that all we were doing was opening this up to States.

But you heard right here on the Senate floor that the notion that every pregnancy is subject to the control of the government from the moment of conception. That does not allow for a differentiation between one State and another.

And now that the States' rights assertion has been proven false, now that it is clear that there are many Members not only of Congress but of State legislatures who want a nationwide ban on women's ability to make these reproductive choices, it becomes clearer and clearer why this particular bill is so important. It is only a matter of time until we see those bills being voted on in legislatures, trying to criminalize a citizen of one State if they go to another State to get this kind of care or trying to create a nationwide abortion ban.

However you call it, it will intrude on the ability of women to go and seek this care. And what we are seeing already is women with troubled pregnancies, for whom there is an indicated treatment, unable to get the treatment that medical science knows is the right treatment, whether it is twins, one of whom isn't viable, or a woman's ability to have further pregnancies if this one is not terminated, or the ability of a woman to simply be treated for sepsis, for instance, before it turns to life-threatening and not have to wait and look at the watch and let her get sicker and sicker, knowing that the end is the same, in any event, but putting her life and health at risk in order to allow the will of a bunch of State legislators to turn up in the examination room or the treatment room with her and her family and her doctor. For all of these reasons--because the proponents of a nationwide abortion ban, because the proponents of undoing Roe v. Wade, have simply been incredible for too long--we simply have to assume the worst.

And this bill is an important and sensible way to make sure that if the Presiding Officer's State or my State want to allow that freedom for women, that women can come there and get the care that they need-- very often, in a troubled pregnancy, for their own or their future children's or the siblings' well-being. So for all those reasons, I wish we had the chance to vote on this and look forward to future chances.

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