“Our bill would empower the Department of Justice to protect women and their doctors in pro-choice states from anti-choice states’ attempts to prosecute them.”
Under Rosen-led bill, “if a woman from Texas travels to my state of Nevada, a pro-choice state, the Nevada doctor she sees cannot be prosecuted under Texas’s extreme abortion ban.”
VIEW/DOWNLOAD VIDEO OF FULL SPEECH HERE
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) took to the Senate floor to urge her colleagues to pass the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act, which she introduced with Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), and Alex Padilla (D-CA). This legislation will protect doctors in pro-choice states like Nevada from prosecution by anti-choice states.
Watch Senator Rosen’s full remarks here.
Below are Senator Rosen’s floor remarks as delivered:
Mr. President
In the month since the Supreme Court struck down Roe versus Wade, the assault on reproductive rights by anti-choice, MAGA Republicans has been relentless.
We’ve seen and heard the horror stories of women in states that have outlawed abortion.
We’ve seen women, and even young girls — children as young as ten — who were raped and unable to get an abortion in their own states.
And we’ve seen examples of states looking to restrict a woman’s ability to travel to other states to get the medical care — the often lifesaving care — they desperately need.
In fact, that is an issue that Republicans in this chamber objected to when Democrats brought up a bill to guarantee the fundamental right of women to travel in this country to seek care.
MAGA Republicans want to strip women of their freedoms and the ability to choose what happens to their own bodies.
If MAGA extremists have their way in Congress, they will enact a rigid nationwide abortion ban which will threaten women and their doctors with jail time.
And look at what’s already happening: Anti-choice states are working to stop women from going to pro-choice states to seek care, and now they are even going after the doctors in those states who are simply doing their jobs — taking care of their patients.
This is utterly and completely outrageous.
We cannot allow this to happen.
That is why Senators Murray, Padilla, Luján, and I introduced legislation to protect doctors in states like Nevada, where abortion remains LEGAL, from facing prosecution by anti-choice states.
No doctor should ever be jailed for providing women with the reproductive, and often life-saving care they need, wherever those women are from.
Our bill — the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act — would do exactly what is in the name.
It would let doctors — medical professionals — provide reproductive care in states like Nevada where abortion is legal without fear of prosecution or fear of jail time.
Our bill would empower the Department of Justice to protect women and their doctors in pro-choice states from anti-choice states’ attempts to prosecute them.
This means that if a woman from Texas travels to my state of Nevada, a pro-choice state, the Nevada doctor she sees cannot be prosecuted under Texas’s extreme abortion ban.
We need to pass this now, without delay, without objections. We must protect women, and we must protect their doctors.
We must pass the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act now.
Thank you.
