Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) joined Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) in issuing the following statement in response to new legislation introduced by Senate Republicans that would create a new government-run website to collect data on pregnant women and direct women to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers and other “resources” to pressure women into carrying pregnancies to term, no matter their circumstances.
The legislation would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a new government-run website, pregnancy.gov, that pregnant women in America would be encouraged to visit and answer a series of questions to generate a list of pregnancy-related “resources” within their zip code. The legislation specifies that such “resources” would include information about the “risks” of abortion, “information on child development from moment of conception,” scam abortion pill “reversal” services, and other misinformation peddled by anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers—and would explicitly exclude any “entity, including its affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, and clinics, that performs, induces, refers for, or counsels in favor of abortions.” The website would also encourage users to provide their contact information, “which the Secretary may use to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users”—meaning that pregnant women would be encouraged to provide data to a potential Trump administration and potentially allow a government bureaucrat to follow up with them about the status of their pregnancy. The legislation would also take steps to enshrine fetal personhood, by requiring child support payments to start at pregnancy. The full text of the proposed legislation is HERE.
“Americans don’t want the government to track, intimidate, and coerce pregnant women into carrying their pregnancies to term no matter their circumstances. Yet, Senate Republicans want to mandate the creation of an online federal database where women will be encouraged to register their pregnancies with the government in order to push them toward anti-abortion propaganda and dangerous crisis pregnancy centers—this tells us exactly how Republicans will weaponize the whole of government to restrict a woman’s freedom to choose and force them to stay pregnant no matter what,” said Senators Butler, Murray, Stabenow, Klobuchar, Cantwell, Baldwin, Hirono, Warren, Cortez Masto, Smith, and Rosen.
“Republican politicians refuse to accept that Americans just don’t want the government to be making deeply personal family planning decisions—and this legislation is going nowhere while Democrats have the majority in the Senate. Americans must be clear-eyed about the fact that if Donald Trump and Republicans take control, legislation like this is just one stop on the road to a nationwide abortion ban,” the senators continued.
“Democrats are fighting to make sure that every woman has the right to make her own decisions about her pregnancy and her future, without interference from politicians—and we’re fighting to restore Roe v. Wade at the first opportunity we get.”
Senate Democrats made clear at the outset of this Congress that they are continuing to fight to protect every American’s reproductive rights and will be a firewall against Republicans’ continued attacks on women’s rights. Senate Democrats have introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; importantly, Senate Democrats are fighting to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would restore the right to abortion nationwide. Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Senate Democrats sought unanimous consent on the Senate floor to pass four common-sense bills to protect women’s fundamental freedoms—Senate Republicans blocked every single bill. Senate Democrats also hosted a “State of Abortion Rights” briefing earlier this year to highlight the chaos and cruelty of the abortion bans that have been enacted in Republican-led states since Roe was overturned, and the need to pass legislation to restore the right to abortion nationwide.
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