Leaked SCOTUS majority opinion could overturn 50 years of precedent protecting reproductive rights for all
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) joined Senate Democrats on the steps of the Senate to deliver remarks on the urgent need to protect reproductive rights in response to the leaked draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, signaling the Supreme Court of the United States will soon overturn Roe v. Wade. On the steps of the U.S. Senate, Cantwell said the following:
“Democrats have been fighting for Americans’ health care rights, and Republicans have been trying to overturn them.
“They’ve tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and we have stopped them. And now you don’t hear them talking about that, because they now want to talk about taking away women’s reproductive health care rights.
“We are going to fight in the United States Senate to make sure that every American understands that 50 years of settled law, 50 years of Republican nominees coming before the committee and saying that they believe this is settled law, to now foist on the American public an invasion of their rights to privacy and pretend that those rights of privacy do not exist in the Constitution.
“These people are dead wrong. The American people know that those rights to privacy affect so many aspects of their lives. They affect every aspect, whether it’s the government intruding on their lives, whether it’s other individuals or corporations, they believe that we can make laws to protect an individual right to privacy, and that also is part of determining what we as women do with our own bodies.
“So the American people, the majority, as my colleague just said, the majority of American people support this policy as settled law. The majority of states support this as settled law. And now we just need a few men on the Supreme Court to come clean about the intentions that they never made clear to a Senate Judiciary Committee, and have our Republican colleagues come clean about this because they are overturning your constitutional right.
“And we in America, the women of America, will march to protect these rights on behalf of all of us.”
Last night, in response to the breaking news of the leaked opinion, Senator Cantwell released this statement linked HERE.
In December 2021, Senator Cantwell spoke on the Senate floor in response to the U.S. Supreme Court starting oral arguments on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could roll back decades of precedent upholding the right to reproductive health care.
In September, Cantwell joined 47 Democrats in the Senate and 188 in the House in filing a bicameral amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, urging the Supreme Court to uphold the nearly 50 years of precedent in Roe v. Wade and protect the constitutional right to abortion care.
Senator Cantwell is a cosponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) that was introduced in June. WHPA guarantees a pregnant person’s right to access an abortion—and the right of an abortion provider to deliver these abortion services—free from medically unnecessary restrictions that interfere with a patient’s individual choice or the provider-patient relationship.
A video of Senator Cantwell’s remarks is available HERE, audio HERE, and a full transcript HERE.
A video of the full event including all Senators’ remarks is available HERE.