On the recordMarch 14, 2018
Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from Washington to talk about the challenge that women both here in the United States and across the world are facing from the excesses of this administration. What we have seen time and again is that the Trump administration has exhibited a dangerous obsession with rolling back women's reproductive rights here in the United States and abroad. Just in the past 14 months in office, this administration has launched a multipronged and aggressive assault on women's rights. One of President Trump's first acts in office was to reinstate and greatly expand the global gag rule, which prohibits U.S. funding for international women's health organizations that so much as mention abortion. What they did was to say that this is not going to just affect those organizations but any health organization that the United States puts funding into. This action will cause a significant increase in unsafe abortions and maternal deaths across the developing world. The administration has proposed budgets that would eliminate all Federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and, going even further, would prohibit States that on their own would direct Federal funds to Planned Parenthood for those same health services. They would prohibit States from doing that. Most recently, the State Department reportedly removed data on reproductive healthcare from its annual human rights report.…





