Cori Bush

We've already seen the benefits of decriminalizing in the states.

It needs to be regulated. It needs to be carefully controlled, but we should not be throwing people into prison for any period of time, for one day, because they smoke marijuana.

Republican abortion bans and restrictions are already taking away rights and jeopardizing the health of more than 30 million women.

Republicans are showing us the America that they envision. It is a place that limits women's freedom and imposes government control over our bodies and our choices.

While Republicans are pushing to criminalize abortions nationwide, Democrats--the Democrats are fighting to protect the freedom of every person to make their own medical decisions without interference from the state.

If Republicans succeed, they will strip reproductive freedoms from nearly 64 million women in America.

This chilling Republican vision is not what the American people want. The majority of the people in the United States support a woman's right to choose.

There is no democracy if women cannot make decisions about their own healthcare.

A national ban will increase maternal deaths.

We will not stop until we ensure that everyone has the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions.

The power and influence of corporations has increased exponentially while labor union participation has significantly declined.

It's time for us to reconsider the tremendous influence a select few corporations have over our economic and political systems.

We have over 40 years of data that proves Reagan-era policies encouraged monopolies and concentrated markets into increasingly fewer hands.

The unprecedented severity of corporate profiteering and its negative impact on workers, consumers, and our small businesses within communities cannot be overstated.

It's time to change the rules that implement price gaps, strengthen antitrust laws, increase minimum wage, bolster the power of our unions.

Dredd Scott is buried in St. Louis in my district, and his legacy serves as a reminder of the dangers in believing that the Supreme Court has always been a just body. It has not.

It is important to note that our most fundamental rights have never been safe, and they never will be guaranteed so long as they depend on the ideological whim of nine unaccountable, unelected justices with lifetime appointments.

It reinforces why Congress should strip the Court of the right to take away fundamental rights.

Rape is rape. Sexual assault is sexual assault.

How dare this society. How dare this government. How dare the Republicans that actually support this kind of -- this kind of heinous, heinous disregard for people. How dare they say that they are for life.

It`s not about actually saving lives. It`s not about actually caring for people. It`s not about making sure that people have the rights to their own bodies. It`s about control.

First of all it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. I think about when I had my abortion and I was sitting in the abortion clinic across from a 13-year-old who did not even want to look up, did not want to raise her head.

Until we speak up as a full nation, and speak out and start going after those who are those perpetrators, of rape and sexual assault, until we start normalizing it as something that happened or something that didn`t happen, or could not…

St. Louis and I thank you, Chairwoman Maloney for convening this urgent, urgent hearing.

Despite the wrong information provided by my colleagues on the other side, there are state laws that prosecute people for performing their own abortions.