[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 19, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S1227-S1236] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-19
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. BENNET: I feel like, in fact, I have been here on a weekly basis to talk about this issue. And the reason I feel that way is that I have been here on a weekly basis to talk about what is happening in the wake of the Dobbs decision, which stripped the American people of the first fundamental freedom, the first fundamental right, that we have lost since reconstruction. This was a 50-year effort on the part of certain people in this country, with an ideological commitment to overturn Roe v. Wade, who used every single mechanism that they could of our democracy and, now, ultimately, our judiciary, to enforce a legal outcome that the vast majority of the American people have never supported and, today, don't support. We find ourselves on the floor today, I dare say, facing a resolution by the Senator from Alabama, whom I have been out here arguing with for the last 6 weeks--a resolution that would be decried by, I would bet, 9 out of 10 Americans. I will be fair: 8 out of 10 Americans. This is an effort in the wake of the Dobbs decision, which stripped the American people of this fundamental freedom, this fundamental right that families have relied on for 50 years. Millions of veterans now live in States where abortion is banned. I will come to that in a second. In an attempt to deal with the catastrophe in the wake of Dobbs, the VA has promulgated some rules to make it allowable in the Veterans' Administration. When a veteran or their family member has been raped, is the victim of incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake, what the VA has said--because we are dealing with the overturning of Roe v. Wade--in those cases, those three limited cases, we are going to allow people to get access to care at the Veterans' Administration. That has set off the Senator from Alabama, who is now trying to get the Senate to pass a resolution to ban that so that veterans and their families who are the victims of rape, who are the victims of incest, or where the life of the mother is at stake, cannot get medical care at the Veterans' Administration. In a State like his, which has banned abortion, that is what is at stake this week. A month ago, we were on this floor because the same Senator from Alabama was putting a blanket hold on every single flag officer's promotion in the U.S. military. Think about that. That sounds impossible. That sounds like an exaggeration. Madam President, the reason it sounds that way to you is because, first of all, you are a reasonable person, but, second of all, it has never happened in the history of this Senate before--that somebody has held up the promotion of every single flag officer, put a blanket hold on. Now, that is not because of what the VA is doing. That is because of what the Department of Defense is doing, because the Department of Defense, again, in the wake of Dobbs--the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade--in the wake of that, DOD has said: If you are serving in a State where abortion is banned, we will pay for your travel from that State to another State. We will say that you don't need to use unpaid leave to get to that other State. And we have said--DOD, not me, has said: If you want to take a little longer to talk to your commanding officer about one of the most personal decisions anybody could make, any family could make, any woman could make, we are going to give you a little bit of extra time to do that. Those are the three things. I bet 80 percent of the American people support those things, and I guarantee you more than 80 percent of the American peopledo not support the idea that we are going to hold up every single flag officer who is coming here for a promotion, at a moment when Putin has invaded Ukraine and China is rattling their saber over their idiosyncratic view of how the world ought to work. I heard that somebody today said: Well, this veterans rule violates the Hyde amendment. First of all, the Hyde amendment, as is well known, doesn't even apply to the VA. And, if it did--guess what--there are three exceptions to the Hyde amendment: rape, incest, and the health of the mother. So they are even trying to turn back Hyde. That is what they are trying to do on the floor of this Senate, and they are messing with the readiness of the American Armed Forces to do it. What brought us here? What brought us here was the Dobbs decision. What brought us here was a Court packed--packed--with a wish list of people who, for 50 years, have been fighting for an originalist--so-called originalist; made up, made up--but an originalist conception of constitutional law, and they finally found a guy in the form of President Donald Trump who was willing to put these people on the Court. And they gave the Court the majority they needed to eviscerate Roe v. Wade, to strip this fundamental right, to strip this fundamental freedom, and to do it with contempt; to not wrestle with the question of what is going to happen to people serving in the Armed Forces of the United States if they are unlucky enough to need an abortion and they live in a State like Alabama, for example, where, if you are a doctor and you perform an abortion, you can go to jail for 99 years--although, admittedly, admittedly, there is an exception in Alabama for the life of the mother. This end point--I hope it is an end point. This end point of that 50- year war on freedom, war on Roe v. Wade, war on a set of expectations that women, in particular, have in this country, but that families have in this country--that war was brought to a conclusion, in some sense, by a majority opinion written by Justice Scalia that, essentially--read it, read it--essentially came down to this: If it wasn't a right in 1868, it is not a right in 2023. If it wasn't a freedom in 1868, it is not a freedom today. Forget that, at that time of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, Black people and women didn't even have the right to vote. They didn't even have the right to vote. But in the 21st century, when we are meant to compete in a global economy, in a society that, by any measure, is still profoundly unequal but far more equal than it was in those days, where women do have the right to vote, where Black people do have the right--thank God--in this country to vote, we are reading the language in 1868 and saying: Well, was it a right or a freedom then? That is how we are going to decide whether it is one today. In the early 1990s, when I was in law school and when we knew that it was at the dawn of originalism--I mean, that was happening right then. It was part of the Reagan revolution. It was part of law and economics. It was part of making the shareholder the supreme being in the United States of America--part of that whole measure, that whole time period in the country's history. That is when some genius--and they were a genius--came up with the word ``originalism'' to describe a legal ideology that says: We are only going to look in the rearview mirror to figure out what our rights are today--as if they could divine the intent of the Founding Fathers on a question like abortion, who, by the way, had massive disagreements among themselves. Anybody who has ever read even a signpost or a tourist--you know, some sort of signpost on the side of Independence Hall in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia--knows how many disagreements the Founders had with themselves. The idea that somehow you are going to divine their one view about what the Constitution should say is preposterous. But here we are. Here we are. And we were told when this happened: Don't worry about it. You know, this is just a matter of the Supreme Court sending this right, sending this fundamental freedom--this fundamental freedom--back to the States. That is all. It is just an exercise in federalism. Well, since this happened, since Dobbs was passed, 18 States have banned abortion. I have one kid who is about the age of the pages now. Two others are older than the pages now. I am telling you, I was with my daughter Caroline the other day, riding through Colorado, looking at the billboards as we went by, and I said to her: Man, Caroline--she is now 23--if you had told me 20 years ago that in 2023 we would be living in a country that was legalizing marijuana and banning abortion, I would not have believed you. I would not have believed you. She doesn't believe it either. As my friend Jon Tester, my friend the farmer from Montana, says, his daughter is having to fight for rights that her mother never had to fight for because her grandmother won these rights. And now we are rolling it all back because the Supreme Court majority that Donald Trump made possible after all these years, after all this effort to strip the American people of this freedom, has decided, if it is not a right in 1868, it is not a right today.  So 18 States have banned abortion. Nine have no exceptions for rape or incest. There have been now restrictions on freedom to travel. Texas famously has put $10,000 bounties. It is like the Wild West, all of a sudden, where if you are a friend or a neighbor who is driving somebody to access abortion services and somebody catches you, says you shouldn't have been doing it, you can get a $10,000 bounty. In Florida, in the Sunshine State--I think Florida is the third largest State in the country--one of them, the third largest State in the country--in broad daylight--actually, to be honest with you, it was at 11 o'clock at night--the Governor has now signed a 6-week ban on abortion. One in three women don't even know that they are pregnant. A third of women don't even know that they are pregnant at 6 weeks. I don't know whether the Governor of Florida knows that or doesn't know that, but it is an interesting question: Which would be worse, him knowing it or not knowing it? And, now, all of a sudden, 9 million veterans and their families, including 2 million female veterans, live in States that have banned abortion or restricted it in ways that would have been unimaginable to my daughter Caroline, to families all over the country. And, as I said, in some limited way of dealing with it, the VA announced these rules. But these narrow rules that have to do with rape and incest and the life of the mother, they are not enough for the Senator from Alabama, and, this afternoon, he is forcing a vote to strip away the VA policy and impose a position on every veteran in America that is more extreme than his own State. Hyde doesn't apply to the VA, and, even if it did, there are exceptions for rape, for incest, for the life of the mother. That is not extreme enough for them. His resolution would ensure that veterans who have been raped, who are victims of incest, whose life is at risk, can't seek an abortion at the VA, along with their spouses and their dependents. Even in Alabama there is an exception for the life of the mother, and they have one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. I am going to come to an end because my colleague is here from Nevada. I have two colleagues here from Nevada. So I am confused. I said I am going to finish, but I will take a couple of minutes and then finish, but by saying that it is tragic that we have to have this vote in 2023. It is. This is a tragedy. It is a tragedy. It is a spectacle. It is an embarrassment. But at least people will have the opportunity to know where every Member of the Senate stands, and they are going to understand what a 50-year political effort to strip America of this freedom looks like. You know, there was a survey in a poll last month in Florida, and my colleague won't be surprised to know this: 75 percent of Florida opposes a 6-week ban; 61 percent of the GOP in Florida opposes a 6-week ban. Let that sink in. I don't know. I am not a great politician, unlike some people. But, maybe, that is why he was signing it at 11 o'clock at night. Maybe that is why, when the Governor of Florida signed it,he sent out a tweet that didn't say he had signed a 6-week ban on abortion in Florida, because 75 percent of the people there oppose it, just like the majority of Americans. And so I think we should defeat this resolution. I think the American people should take note of every single vote that is cast here by these Senators. But, really, as important as that, we need to understand what has happened to our politics, what has happened to our Supreme Court through this 50-year war on American freedom and this 50-year war on a woman's right to choose. And we need to come together as a country and codify a woman's right to choose so the next generation of Americans has the benefit that the last 50 years of Americans have had. I yield the floor.