*** WATCH: Senator Murray holds press conference announcing effort to pass bill on floor this week***
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) introduced the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act to protect doctors against Republicans’ non-stop attacks and ensure they can safely provide abortion care in states where it is still legal like Washington state. This week, the Senators will take to the Senate floor to seek unanimous consent to pass the legislation.
“Doctors shouldn’t be punished for providing their patients with legal abortion care—full stop. The legal threats, the intimidation, and the non-stop attacks from Republicans against abortion providers are unacceptable, and Democrats are fighting back,” said Senator Murray. “This bill is simple: it protects doctors providing legal abortion care, and ensures they can practice medicine and save lives without threat. It’s urgent that we protect the doctors so many women depend on, so this week we’re calling for unanimous consent to get this done—and Republicans will either stand aside so we can pass this bill, or show once and for all that their messaging that they ‘don’t want to punish doctors’ is hollow.”
Republicans’ nonstop attacks against women’s reproductive freedom have long targeted doctors, with state laws like Texas’ SB8 allowing for anyone to bring a lawsuit against an abortion provider. But in the wake of theSupreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, these attacks have ramped up—with Republican state legislators drafting legislation that would make it a crime to perform an abortion on a state resident even in another state where abortion is legal. And already, abortion providers are facing non-stop attacks from Republican politicians, including Dr. Caitlin Bernard—an abortion provider who is facing legal threats after providing legal abortion care to a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to cross state lines. Dr. Bernard’s case is emblematic of what abortion providers across the country are facing, as Republicans lob legal threats and intimidate doctors providing legal abortion care.
The Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act will help protect against these attacks, ensuring that providers in states where abortion remains legal are protected from any efforts to restrict their practice or create uncertainty about their legal liability.
“As a full-spectrum OBGYN and abortion provider, I wholeheartedly appreciate the Senate’s effort to create legislation that protects our ability to provide important reproductive healthcare for our patients. I have experienced personal and professional harassment for simply doing my job, including inflammatory and intimidating statements from the highest levels of my home state government and threats of violence from people I have never met. This behavior cannot continue,” said Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who has endorsed the legislation. “Living in a state with one of the highest maternal mortality risks and with a severe shortage of OBGYN specialists, I can say firsthand how much people in my state need the care I and other OBGYNs provide. If we do not stop this state-sanctioned harassment, we will lose OBGYNs and health risks will increase substantially. I stand with our Senators to promote the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act to preserve our ability provide important health services in my home state, including abortion care.”
“Imagine looking someone in the eye and saying: ‘I have all the skills and the tools to help you, but our state’s politicians have told me I can’t,’” said Dr. Nisha Verma with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “As a doctor, I am being forced to grapple with impossible situations more and more – situations where the laws of my state directly violate the medical expertise I gained through years of training and the oath I took to provide the best care to my patients. I am heartbroken that the people in my communities in the South are not able to access the same quality of care as those living in other parts of the country, not because their doctors don’t have the skills or knowledge to provide that care, but because they are prohibited from doing so by abortion bans that are based solely on politics. Politics. Not medicine.”
“Being an abortion provider means being for our communities, supporting them and providing care in the way they want or need. It also means living with the threat of surveillance, harassment, intimidation and violence from those that seek to eliminate abortion access and harm providers of this care. This is our reality,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, an OBGYN and President & CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “Considering the long history of harm against abortion providers, I am glad to see Congress introducing the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act. Every person – abortion providers, supporters, staff, every person in our community deserves support and protection. We deserve to what we are trained to do: provide comprehensive reproductive health care that patients need without bias, shame, or stigma. We deserve to provide this essential health care without violence or harassment.”
The Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act will ensure that providers in states where abortion remains legal are protected from any efforts to restrict their practice or create uncertainty about their legal liability. Specifically, the bill will:
- Protect health care providers in states where abortion is legal from being subject to laws that try to prevent them from providing reproductive health care services or make them liable for providing those services to patients from any other state. These protections could be enforced by a federal lawsuit from the Department of Justice, a patient, or a provider, ensuring a future Department of Justice could not turn a blind eye to state laws that violate these protections;
- Prohibit any federal funds from being used to pursue legal cases against individuals who access legal reproductive health care services or against health care providers in states where abortion is legal;
- Create a new grant program at the Department of Justice to fund legal assistance or legal education for reproductive health care service providers;
- Create a new grant program at the Department of Health and Human Services to support reproductive health care service providers in obtaining physical, cyber, or data privacy security upgrades necessary to protect their practice and patients; and
- Protect reproductive health care providers from being denied professional liability insurance coverage because of legal services offered to patients.
In addition to Senators Murray, Luján, Padilla, and Rosen, the legislation is also co-sponsored by Senators Schumer (D-NY), Bennet (D-CO), Markey (D-MA), Stabenow (D-MI), Heinrich (D-NM), Blumenthal (D-CT), Wyden (D-OR), Warren (D-MA), Merkley (D-OR), Smith (D-MN), Van Hollen (D-MD), Cardin (D-MD), Menendez (D-NJ), Klobuchar (D-MN), Murphy (D-CT), Reed (D-RI), Cortez Masto (D-NV), Whitehouse (D-RI), Hirono (D-HI), Sanders (I-VT), and Duckworth (D-IL).
The bill has been endorsed by: Dr. Caitlin Bernard, Physicians for Reproductive Health, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Catholics for Choice, the National Partnership for Women & Families, the Center for Reproductive Rights, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Council of Jewish Women.
Read full text of the legislation here. Read a one-pager here.
Senator Murray’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
“Hi everyone, thanks so much for being here today.
“And a big thanks especially to Senators Rosen, Luján, and Padilla for their partnership on this bill.
“And to my colleague Representative Schrier from my home state of Washington, for leading this legislation in the House.
“Our bill—the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act—is really straightforward. It protects doctors providing legal abortion care and ensures they can do their jobs, practice medicine, and save lives without threat of legal action.
“No doctor should ever be punished for caring for patients and providing legal abortion care, but that’s exactly what extreme Republicans are doing across the country.
“This is the terrifying reality we are living in.
“Right now, Republican state lawmakers are drafting legislation that would make it a crime to provide abortion care to a resident even in another state where it’s legal.
“That means doctors in Washington state who are just doing their jobs… who are just providing the care that their patients need—care that is legal by the way—could face lawsuits that threaten their practices and their livelihoods.
“And make no mistake—Republicans aren’t waiting to pass laws to threaten and intimidate doctors providing abortion care.
“Right now, in Indiana, a doctor is being investigated after providing an abortion for a 10-year-old who was raped.
“Think about that. A doctor is being investigated after doing their job, after simply providing health care—care that can be lifesaving, care that was entirely legal in her state, care that—up until Republicans’ far-right Supreme Court overturned Roe—was legal across the country.
“The fact Dr. Bernard is being investigated, after just doing her job and helping her patient, is chilling.
“And it’s just the latest in the parade of atrocities caused by Republicans’ extremism.
“And I want to be very clear: while Dr. Bernard’s story may be in headlines across the country: she is not the only doctor facing threats, and she will not be the last.
“That’s why I’m so glad to have providers—like Dr. Bernard, and like Dr. Verma, who is with us today—who are willing to speak out and make clear to the world the threat they are facing, and the terrifying stakes if they are prevented from providing the legal reproductive health care that so many women depend on.
“That’s why I’m so proud to stand alongside them and make crystal clear that doctors should not be punished.
“Republicans like to claim they don’t believe in punishing doctors either: but the threats, the intimidation, the laws they are drafting—they all say otherwise.
“So we are going to keep putting them on the record as to where they actually stand.
“Which is why this week, Senator Luján, Senator Padilla, Senator Rosen, and I will work to pass the Let Doctors Provide Reproductive Health Care Act.
“This is once again a simple bill to address a threat we know is far too real.
“This bill will protect doctors providing legal abortion care, and ensure they can practice medicine and save lives without fear of legal threats and intimidation.
“It will make clear that the attacks we have seen on doctors are unacceptable. That politicians should not be harassing, scaring, investigating, threatening, or punishing doctors for providing care that is perfectly legal, that patients want, and that—in many cases—is even necessary to save their lives.
“So to all the Republicans who have claimed they “don’t want to punish doctors,”
“If you want to show that your word is more than another empty talking point, more than another broken promise.
“This is a no-brainer—let us pass this bill this week.
“But if they don’t—if they block us like they blocked legislation to protect the right to travel across state lines for an abortion, like they blocked legislation to expand family planning services, like they blocked legislation to protect the right to contraceptives—their obstruction will continue to speak louder than any of their hollow claims about caring for patients, families, and women.
“And Democrats will continue fighting to protect the rights—and to protect the people—Republicans have put in such grave danger.
“Thank you, and now I’ll turn it over to Dr. Verma.”
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