Ed Markey: “I want to thank Senator Baldwin for her leadership on this issue, for helping us to focus on this threat to the rights…”

“I want to thank Senator Baldwin for her leadership on this issue, for helping us to focus on this threat to the rights of Americans that is being propounded in this Defense bill. I want to thank Senator Merkley. I want to thank everyone who is joining with Senator Baldwin in this fight because today we are considering the National Defense Authorization Act, and embedded within its language would be a ban on TRICARE coverage of gender-affirming care for children of servicemembers in our country. If passed into law, it would be the first anti-LGBTQ law passed by Congress in decades. Since the 1990s, there has been no anti-LGBTQ law which has passed. If passed into law, it would force thousands of members of the military to decide between service to their country and guaranteeing their child can get the healthcare they need. This language was the product of a nationwide campaign against trans rights--a campaign that has facilitated the harassment of teachers, bomb threats to children's hospitals, and attacks on transgender people. This is the same campaign that drives legislators from State capitals to Capitol Hill to insist on dictating Americans' healthcare decisions. We have seen this playbook before. For decades, Republicans attacked the right to abortion. They slowly chipped away, State by State, law by law, and today there is no constitutional right to abortion. Now they have turned their attention to servicemembers' families.…”