Peter Welch: “I rise in support of this legislation. I thank my colleagues, Senator Murray, Senator Booker, and Senator Duckworth. You…”

“I rise in support of this legislation. I thank my colleagues, Senator Murray, Senator Booker, and Senator Duckworth. You know, there are two things. One is good news, and one is bad news. I will start with the bad news. We have a terrible U.S. Supreme Court. It will live in infamy for many reasons but none more than an ignominious decision that took away constitutional rights that American citizens enjoyed. They stripped women of their right to choose. Enormously bad consequences. It has created an incentive for folks who have their views to try to impose them on others, and we saw that in Alabama with their effort to prohibit people from having access to in vitro fertilization. But there is good news. The good news: our American families, couples who want to have a child, who are so excited about taking on that challenge of loving this new person and caring for them through their infancy, through their adolescence, looking forward to when they themselves will be grandparents. That is the good news. In 2022, 91,000 infants, through IVF, came into these families, so those couples have that opportunity to have this place to give the love that is within them that they can now express, having this child. That is really the good news here.…”