Sheldon Whitehouse: “I come to the floor to support my colleague and friend Senator Cortez Masto in her efforts to bring this legislation not…”

“I come to the floor to support my colleague and friend Senator Cortez Masto in her efforts to bring this legislation not only to the floor but to passage. This has been a long, long trail of broken promises and false assertions. It began with the broken promises and false assertions of judicial nominees who came before the Judiciary Committee to assure us that the protections of Roe v. Wade were a precedent and that they would respect precedent. Of course, that all evaporated. We then heard the argument that this was ``States' rights.'' My friend from Utah may not like the phrase, but it is one that his side has used over and over and over again. Call it States' rights or call it federalism, the notion was that all we were doing was opening this up to States. But you heard right here on the Senate floor that the notion that every pregnancy is subject to the control of the government from the moment of conception. That does not allow for a differentiation between one State and another. And now that the States' rights assertion has been proven false, now that it is clear that there are many Members not only of Congress but of State legislatures who want a nationwide ban on women's ability to make these reproductive choices, it becomes clearer and clearer why this particular bill is so important.…”