Expanding Access to Family Planning Act

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues Senator Klobuchar, Senator Wyden, Senator Hirono, and so many others who have been out here speaking on behalf of women and their ability to make their own healthcare decisions after the disastrous decision from the Supreme Court. And it has been now almost a month since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ended the right to abortion, and really upended healthcare for women across this country.

And every single day, women and providers and patients have been shouting from the rooftops about how damaging this is, how women's lives are now at risk. Every single day we are seeing the horrors caused by Republicans' oppression: women forced to stay pregnant and give birth when they don't want to; patients denied prescriptions that they need; a 10-year-old forced to travel across State lines to get an abortion after being raped; a woman experiencing a miscarriage left bleeding for 10 days as providers were not clear if they could treat her due to Republicans' extreme bans.

And all the while, Republicans have been trying to ignore the devastation that they have caused. And even more cruelly, they have been trying to distract us, telling us that what we are seeing isn't really happening. They have tried to say it won't undermine birth- control access, even as patients have been denied Plan B. They have tried to say we don't need to protect the right to travel for abortion care, even as some Republicans are already writing and introducing bills to take that right away.

They have even tried to say their extreme bans won't undermine care for ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages, even as providers have already been forced to change the standard of care because Republicans' dangerous abortion bans making them perform riskier, invasive surgeries than would otherwise be necessary or even sit on their hands until patients' vital signs drop before they can do what is needed to save lives.

It really is unconscionable. And despite what we have heard from Republicans, it is happening right now in this country. And I know I am not the only one who is entirely unconvinced by Republican words about wanting to support women and families.

I am skeptical when one Republican Senator said:

We have to start thinking in terms of some of these things

. . . to be more supportive of families and mothers.

I am skeptical when another one said:

It's not just a matter of saying, ``We are pro-life.'' It's

a matter . . . of promoting and allowing these people who are

making very difficult decisions with their lives to make sure

we can help.

I was, frankly, surprised when, just last week at a hearing that I chaired on how this Dobbs decision threatens women's health, the junior Senator from Kansas claimed he believes that ``family planning opportunities need to be expanded.'' He even promised to continue supporting ``robust funding.''

Here is the chance to match that rhetoric with action because Senator Smith and Senator Warren and I have a bill right here that would do exactly that. In fact, it is even called the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act. I know Senator Smith cares a lot about this. While she can't be here right now due to COVID, I want to thank her for her leadership on this and explain what this bill does for her.

This bill is pretty simple. It almost couldn't be simpler. It takes our Nation's longstanding Family Planning Program, title X, and provides the strong mandatory funding title X needs now to support patients across the country. That is it. It is very easy. It is very straightforward.

If Republicans really mean what they are saying, if they are really serious about expanding access to family planning, there is no reason why we cannot get this done right now. After all, we are talking about a program that has a long history of bipartisan support. We are talking about a program that was signed into law by a Republican, President Nixon, way back in 1970. We are talking about a program that helps patients get the birth control they need, the STI testing and the treatment they count on, the cervical and breast cancer screenings that could save their lives, and the support they need to plan a family on their own terms.

This isn't just the popular thing to do, although helping patients get the birth control they need is an overwhelmingly popular thing to do; this is the right thing to do. Let's get this done. It should not be controversial. It simply expands our Nation's longstanding Family Planning Program--a program, I should note, that we included in our bipartisan funding bill earlier this year.

Just a few months ago, some Republicans were adamantly against any increases for this program, but now, as we hear, they are changing their tune and claiming they do want to support families. They do want to expand family planning services. They want to do exactly what this bill does--unless, of course, they don't mean it, and it is simply rhetoric or just another Republican distraction from the reality that has been ushered in.

Right now, the Republicans will have a chance to go on the record on whether they actually support family planning, whether they actually want to help people get birth control. And believe me, the same people Republicans have been trying to ignore--the same people who are having their healthcare undermined, their lives upended, their controls over their own bodies taken away--are going to be watching us closely, and they are not going to forget how much or how little Republicans' promises are worth.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 4550 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, there you have it--the real Republican position on expanding family planning summed up in two simple words: ``I object.''

As much as Republicans are talking now about supporting women's health, as hard as they might try to pretend that they do support family planning services, when they have been given a chance today to do exactly that--to expand a program with a long track record of helping women get the care they need; a long history, I remind all of us, of bipartisan support--they stood in the way.

Let's be clear. The bill that the Republicans blocked today does not fund abortion. The truth is, title X only provides services like birth control, STI testing, cancer screenings--services Republicans claim to support.

We are not proposing anything radical or groundbreaking; we are simply saying we should expand the national Family Planning Program that already exists, the one President Nixon signed into law decades ago, the one we have already funded before in a bipartisan way many times.

Title X is a program that is already providing patients family planning services and contraception, STI testing and treatment, screenings for breast cancer and cervical cancer, and more. I know that because I have met with title X providers and patients in my home State of Washington many times. I would strongly urge my colleagues who block this bill to do the same. Listen to those patients. Listen to the doctors. Listen to the nurses in their States. This is a program we already know helps so many people, and it can help more.

I can't say I am surprised by Republican objections today. I can't say this is the first time Republicans have said one thing about women's health and done the opposite, and I think we all know full well it won't be the last.

My message to the American people who are witnessing this: Pay attention. Pay attention. The Republican agenda is no to family planning, no to your right to travel for the healthcare you need, and no to your constitutional right to abortion.

Senate Democrats and I will not stop holding them accountable for empty promises or for the devastating harm their extreme abortion bans are now inflicting on so many patients and families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Hawaii for making these very important remarks today with respect to expanding access to family planning.

And, Senator Hirono, let me also, while you are on the floor, tell you how much I appreciate your leadership on the My Body, My Data Act. I am thrilled to be, I believe, one of your sponsors here in the Senate. It is hugely consequential, because we have known from even the draft Alito opinion that women were going to have their personal data weaponized against them.

I know you have a busy schedule, but I just wanted the body to know how extraordinarily important this is, because when we look at technology and, particularly, what technology can do today, what your legislation does--with our colleague from the House, Congresswoman Jacobs--is it gives us a chance to get back to the fundamental issue of privacy rights. We are going to start looking more at the contractual relationships between women and various companies because a lot of those privacy policies aren't worth the paper they are written on.

I just want you to know I am so honored to be your cosponsor on a very related piece of legislation. Your leadership has made a big difference.

I just say to my colleague, sometimes it is a little difficult to figure out where a piece of legislation is going. That is not the case with your bill. My Body, My Data sums it up.

Again, thank you so much for your leadership.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4550

Mr. President, I also want to briefly touch on the important legislation that Senator Smith--my Pacific Northwest colleague--Senator Murray, and Senator Warner have recently introduced. They have an important proposal called the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act. I am proud to cosponsor this legislation. This is another area where Chair Murray and I work very closely together because a lot of these issues can often involve Medicaid, for example. And I just so appreciate my colleague bringing up her important bill with respect to family planning.

The proposition behind this is pretty straightforward. The Supreme Court overturned Roe against the will of the American people. States are criminalizing abortion. Many women and girls are now being forced to carry pregnancies to term and give birth. If they are going to stand by this forced-birth agenda, then you better guarantee basic health for women and families. That is really Senator Murray's challenge to Senate Republicans. You can't be pro-life and pro-family if you are against healthcare that saves lives and protects families.

The Murray legislation, with Senator Smith and Senator Warren--I am pleased to be for it today--is centered on a significant increase in what is known as title X funding, which goes to basic essential services like HIV tests, contraception, treatment for infections, and pregnancy counseling.

And one of those services is really so vitally important. I just want to mention it, and that is cancer screenings. Cancer screenings are a particularly important issue now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe. Over the last few weeks there have been a wave of these horrendous stories, as Senator Murray knows better than anyone, about the chaos this radical Supreme Court ruling has unleashed on women's healthcare-- drawn-out miscarriages, potentially fatal complications left untreated, physicians unsure of what treatments they are legally allowed to perform.

And we know one of the absolute nightmares for women living in forced-birth States is getting pregnant and having cancer at exactly the same time. And the question is: In a world where a miscarriage could lead to criminal charges, how do you treat a pregnant woman with cancer?

So we ought to think about that. And could getting chemo be a crime in a forced-birth State, Senator Murray? In forced-birth States, how many Americans are going to die because they waited too long to begin treatment for breast cancer or cervical cancer or because they didn't maybe get treated at all?

It is appalling that Americans are facing this kind of awful, I think, unthinkable situation, all because six Republicans on the Supreme Court threw 50 years of settled law on abortion rights into the dustbin.

In the parlance of the Senate, Senator Murray, I yield to you. I think your legislation is extraordinarily important.

Uh-oh. I have to reverse some parlance of the Senate and yield to Senator Klobuchar, who also has been a champion of this issue. And I just want the Senate to know, because we are in the Pacific Northwest, we talk about these issues. People ought to make no mistake about it-- Senator Murray has put years and years into the cause of women's health. And I really enjoy being junior partner in the whole effort and look forward to her leadership.

And I yield to Senator Klobuchar.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act, which will help ensure millions of Americans can continue receiving family planning services through the title X program.

For more than 40 years, title X has helped ensure hundreds of thousands of women--regardless of income, background, insurance status, or hometown--have access to basic reproductive healthcare, including wellness exams, cancer screenings, birth control, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

While this program, which was created with bipartisan support, has been around for decades, we have seen what happens when MAGA Republicans are in control. President Trump slashed funding for title X and imposed a dangerous domestic gag rule that banned doctors from telling people how they could access abortion services. The gag rule wreaked havoc across the country. It forced providers to decide whether they wanted to receive title X funding--knowing that healthcare providers wouldn't be able to provide women with accurate and comprehensive information--or say no to this critical family planning funding that supports women across the country through clinics like Planned Parenthood and other nonprofits.

In my home State of Hawaii, the entire network of title X clinics said no to this dangerous rule and rejected the funding, forcing our State to foot the bill. On the other hand, the State of Hawaii, the clinics in Hawaii, because they rejected this funding, could provide the full range of care for their clients, but ultimately the gag rule resulted in a loss of services to thousands of women.

Across the country, Trump's rule slashed title X's patient capacity in half, jeopardizing family planning and contraceptive care for 1.6 million patients nationwide. While President Biden reversed this rule, we can't take anything for granted.

As the rightwing Supreme Court and MAGA Republicans work to eliminate reproductive freedom, it is critical we protect and strengthen title X. That is

exactly what the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act will do. This bill will nearly double funding for title X family planning services by providing $500 million in mandatory funding for title X for each of the next 10 years. It will also ban title X providers from discriminating against patients and require pregnancy consulting services receiving title X funds to provide patients with all of the information about all their reproductive care options, including abortion.

Republicans have made clear they will do anything to get rid of our reproductive freedoms, so we must pass this bill to make sure this program isn't at the whim of those trying to strip us of our healthcare. While Republicans continue to attack our fundamental rights, Democrats are doing everything we can to protect them. That is why, in addition to this important bill, earlier this week, I introduced legislation to codify the right to contraception. All of this is about who gets to make decisions about our bodies--women or a bunch of rightwing politicians.

I believe--and the American people overwhelmingly agree--individuals, not politicians, should be making these deeply personal decisions.

Our Right to Contraception Act and the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act will help ensure they can.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, just very briefly.

Senator Wyden, I am really glad to be able to sponsor the My Bodies, My Data bill with you, because, as we know, any time any of us presses the button and uses our internet, somebody is collecting data, all of this data. And can you imagine there are all of these clinics that purportedly provide information relating to contraception and whatever else relating to reproductive care--these entities are also collecting all kinds of information. And they are not there to make sure that women--mainly women but individuals who access their services--they do not know that these are not institutions that will give them all of the information they need; but, instead, they are collecting a lot of information that can be weaponized.

Thank you very much. This is yet another whole area of concern in this environment, in this climate, where individuals do not have control over our own bodies.

Mr. President, thank you so much. I join my colleagues. Thank you, Senator Wyden, for your on-point remarks and, of course, Senator Murray, for her incredible leadership, not only of the committee but on taking this issue on and making clear to the State of Washington, yes, but also to the country that this should be a woman's decision, a woman and her doctor, family's decision, and not a decision made by politicians.

And part of this is making sure there is access to family planning. Since this decision has come out, I could not believe the number of women that have come up to me at home or in airports, flight attendants, saying things like: Is this really happening? You mean, I am going to have to go to another State just to get reproductive healthcare?

So how about contraception? There are people talking about contraception. People all over the country have realized how extreme this decision is. And one of the people who has been leading

this fight--and, in fact, has been leading this proposal on expanding access to family planning is my colleague Tina Smith. And she is here in spirit today. She has a mild case of COVID. I know she is watching right now because she has been fighting for the rights of women to make their own decisions about their healthcare her entire life. She is the only Senator in the history of the U.S. Senate that actually worked at Planned Parenthood and has a firm understanding and has shown so much leadership in this area. So we thank her. I am speaking for my constituents, of course, to thank Tina Smith for her work and her leadership.

As I noted, 26 days ago, the Supreme Court issued this rule shredding nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. Now women are at the mercy of a patchwork of State laws governing their ability to access reproductive care, leaving them with fewer rights than their moms and their grandmas.

Last week, Senator Murray and I joined several of our Democratic colleagues, including Senator Cortez Masto, who led this bill to preserve a woman's right to travel to other States to access reproductive care. Republicans blocked us. So we are back today because if the Supreme Court won't protect a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions, if Congress can agree to put the protections of Roe v. Wade into law, then everyone in this Chamber has to decide whether they will protect women's healthcare or not. And that includes making sure women have a right to abortion services, but it includes having reliable access to family planning services.

Let's start by passing the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act to protect and expand funding for title X clinics, which support maternal health, cancer screening, contraception, and other essential healthcare.

In 2020 alone--get this number--1.5 million Americans received services through title X. But currently, Federal funding is not enough to serve the number of people who need care. And in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling attacking the freedom and the autonomy of women, it is likely that there will be even more demand in the years ahead. That is why Expanding Access to Family Planning Act gives title X the funding needed to serve women and families for the next 10 years.

This legislation is far from radical. The title X program was actually created under a Republican administration. And the original bill passed with broad bipartisan support. This is about making sure women have a way to take care of themselves, especially when they are pregnant.

Right now, I am thinking about all the women in this country facing an unacceptably uncertain future. We should all be able to agree that, at the very least, we should make sure that they have access to the basic health services that title X provides--a provision that passed during a Republican administration, created under a Republican administration, that understood that women should be able to access to healthcare.

There is a better path forward: We pass this bill, fund family planning, and save women's lives. I call on my colleagues to join me in supporting this necessary and completely pragmatic and sensible legislation for the women of this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am honored to appear with a group of my colleagues on behalf of the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act.

We are here to talk about this essential measure in the post-Roe world. That is a phrase I never thought I would ever utter anywhere, not to mention on the floor of the U.S. Senate. But we are living in the post-Roe world where reproductive rights are under assault as never before and critical reproductive healthcare services are more necessary and also are more at risk than ever before. That is why a consistent, strong source of funding for title X Family Planning Programs are absolutely critical and urgent. That is the purpose of the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act.

What it means for the State of Connecticut is, in the past, $2.5 million in title X funding, allowing patients, mostly women--45,000 of them--critical access to comprehensive family planning and preventive healthcare services. What we are talking about here is not only family planning but also testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, lifesaving cancer screening, and other essential health services. And they are all now at risk.

What they need is the strong and consistent source of funding that this measure would provide, doubling--literally, almost doubling the number of dollars but also guaranteeing over a 10-year period that clinics will receive this funding.

In the State of Connecticut, most of this funding in the past has gone to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. The Cornell Scott- Hill Health Center has received some. They have done absolutely extraordinary work in delivering health services, particularly to women who are uninsured, women who are of lower incomes, and women who are younger--under 30. And that is the primary patient pool that needs these services.

Let me be very blunt. If my Republican colleagues truly care about supporting families, they can show it by supporting this measure and funding title X. In the past, since its inception 50 years ago, it has been bipartisan because people agree that families ought to be a priority, that decisions about when and whether to have children are the most important that we make, that caring for families and particularly prenatal care, screening for sexually transmitted diseases, cancer screening--these health services are vital to all of us, whether we are the patient or not, and that they stay funded in the long run. Preventive healthcare is pound-wise, and it will save money.

We know that the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs strips women of a vitally important freedom and puts it in the hands of government bureaucrats: the decision about when and whether to have children. The least we can do now is to fund the reproductive healthcare services that will save lives and save futures.

Dobbs has put women at risk. It has put reproductive healthcare in grave jeopardy. This measure is necessary to mitigate the effects of Dobbs--more necessary now than ever before. We will never stop fighting for a woman's right to choose when and whether to have children. We will never stop fighting to protect a woman's right to access healthcare that is vital to her own and her children's health.

In the face of mounting attacks on women's health, now is the time to strengthen title X, and that is why we need this legislation. Passing the Expanding Access to Family Planning Act will strengthen our entire healthcare system.

It is simply critical for this $500 million--providing birth control, cancer screening, other kinds of testing and treatment--to be passed. And if my Republican colleagues are serious about supporting families, they ought to be eager to join us. And I am proud to be supporting this measure, and I am eager to see it signed into law.

I yield the floor.