May 23, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 87 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S3078-S3079]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MEMORIAL DAY

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am very proud to be in this Chamber. 
I am always enormously grateful to be in this body, but especially so 
at the beginning of this Memorial Day weekend, when we celebrate the 
patriotism and dedication of our brave men and women in uniform--
patriots who serve our country in so many different ways, as teachers 
and firefighters and police--and the values that bring us together 
always as Americans. What we share is a dedication to the rule of law, 
basic rights, which are the reason that our forbearers and this 
generation have fought in parts of the world whose names we can barely 
pronounce.
  We celebrate those values and the rule of law in our Constitution on 
this day, as we do every day this weekend, as every weekend, because 
they guarantee the rights that enable us to march in parades when we 
wish, gather with our families, worship, and speak as we please.
  They guarantee also the rights to privacy that are at the core of our 
Constitution--the right to be let alone from governmental interference; 
the rights that literally ignited the passion and fight for freedom in 
this country; the right of people to control their destinies, their 
futures, their bodies.
  Those rights are imperiled today as never before. We are in a dark 
and dangerous time in this country with the passage of laws in Alabama 
and Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio, and in other States around the 
country, where the rights of women are under assault.
  But let me say to the men of America, those rights are as important 
to you, and that assault on rights is as critical to you as they are to 
the women of America. Women's healthcare is under attack. Women's 
reproductive rights are under assault, and that means that all rights 
and all healthcare are gravely threatened. All of our rights are under 
attack. That is the reason today I am introducing the Women's Health 
Protection Act with my great colleague and friend Senator Baldwin of 
Wisconsin and, in the House of Representatives, Chu, Frankel, and 
Fudge, who led this effort there. We have actually reintroduced it. It 
has been a longstanding effort of mine and theirs, and my own 
commitment to this cause dates from my law clerkship to Harry Blackmun 
on the U.S. Supreme Court, the year after he wrote the majority opinion 
in Roe v. Wade.
  I am proud to be a man standing for women's healthcare because 
women's healthcare rights are human rights, and the men of America need 
to hear loud and clear that their stake in this fight is as big as 
anyone's, because this fight and this debate and this war on women's 
healthcare endanger and imperil all of our rights in America.
  The Women's Health Protection Act protects a woman's constitutional 
right to access an abortion. It is a right that is absolutely central 
to her economic well-being, her mental and physical health, and her 
freedom--no matter where she lives, no matter what her ZIP code is, no 
matter what her income, race, or religion is. And it is true of men, as 
well, that regardless of where we live or who we think we are, those 
rights are critical to our lives too.
  The Women's Health Protection Act is designed to protect the 
healthcare providers--some of the real heroes of women's healthcare, 
who are delivering the best care they can, the care their patients want 
and need--from absurd and medically unnecessary requirements. These so-
called protections for women that States have enacted relating to the 
width of hallways in clinics or admitting privileges or waiting periods 
are a pretext. They are a disguise, a ruse to restrict women's rights 
to healthcare.
  Under the Women's Health Protection Act, no State--none--can restrict 
women's healthcare by judging the width of hallways or doctors' 
privileges or any of those supposed protections, which are really 
pretexts. And those pushing unconstitutional restrictions will no 
longer be able to disguise their morally repugnant efforts as 
protecting women's healthcare, when, really, they want to take it away.
  The attack on women's rights that we saw last week in Alabama was 
only the most extreme and restrictive of a line of actions--demagogic 
and draconian actions--in our State legislatures around the country. 
But they have created fear, and they have created disparate effect, so 
that women are apprehensive and anxious. And they should be.
  They are angry, and that is absolutely right. We all should be angry. 
We all have a responsibility to stand up and fight back, because these 
laws cannot stand in our country.
  We will fight them in the courts. We will fight them in the 
statehouses, and we will fight them here in the Senate and in the 
House, as we are doing with the Women's Health Protection Act.
  These radical and unconstitutional extreme measures, which simply 
tell a woman when she can become pregnant, involve the Government 
controlling her body, which is against the fundamental guarantee of our 
Constitution in the right to be let alone from unwarranted and illegal 
Government interference.
  We have had enough of the dangerous and deadly attacks on women. We 
have had it with the meddling politicians who are getting between women 
and their own personal healthcare decisions, interfering with women's 
rights to consult their doctors, their families, their counselors, and 
their faith leaders. We have had it with contemptible assaults on 
women's freedom and futures.
  When I worked for Justice Harry Blackmun, I remember we thought at 
the time: All done. All settled. No more issues with a woman's right to 
reproductive rights.
  Roe v. Wade was the decisive opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, the 
law of the land, then and thereafter.
  Here we are, decades later, still fighting this needless and 
senseless battle for a woman's right to privacy and freedom, because 
there are groups and individuals in this country who want to defy the 
U.S. Constitution. Roe v. Wade was correctly decided. The U.S. Supreme 
Court has reaffirmed it in its progeny.
  Nominees to the courts coming before the Judiciary Committee have 
refused to answer my question about whether it was correctly decided, 
but the fact of the matter is, it was, it will be, and it will remain. 
But the courage and strength of women still to assert their rights, of 
providers who give them the care they need, of clinic access escorts 
who every day put their well-being on the line, of the groups like the 
Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood, which advocate 
tirelessly, and of the heroes who keep up the fight and the flame 
should inspire us in this Chamber to say: Enough is enough. Let's pass 
the Women's Health Protection Act so

[[Page S3079]]

women no longer fear that their rights will be imperiled regardless of 
where they live and where they come from.
  We will not be silent. We will not stop fighting. We will not give 
up, and we are not going away.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Senator Collins and Senator Smith pertaining to the 
submission of S. 1657 are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted 
Resolutions.'')
  Ms. SMITH. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

                          ____________________