Under Attack: Republicans' Escalating War on Reproductive Freedom - Senate Democrats Spotlight Forum

On Tuesday, June 24th at 2:30 PM ET—the three-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning the constitutional right to abortion—U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN) will host a spotlight forum for Senate Democrats to hear from panelists who have suffered the consequences of the Dobbs decision and subsequent Republican abortion bans firsthand and will speak to how the Trump administration and Republican politicians are attacking reproductive rights and women’s health care across the board—and escalating their efforts to ban abortion nationwide.

The senators’ spotlight forum comes as President Trump has taken direct aim at reproductive health care in his first few months in office, including by: pardoning anti-abortion extremists found guilty of assaulting and injuring abortion clinic staff and announcing that his Department of Justice will largely no longer enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act; attacking mifepristone based on anti-abortion junk science; laying the groundwork to make “fetal personhood” the law of the land—which would ban abortion in every state and curtail pregnant women’s rights; rescinding CMS guidance reaffirming that the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals to provide life-saving care to pregnant women suffering medical emergencies, which might include abortion care in certain situations; repealing two Executive Orders that sought to protect and expand access to reproductive health care in the aftermath of Dobbs; reinstating the Global Gag Rule that targets reproductive health care around the world; scrubbing government websites of vital information about reproductive health care; and appointing notorious anti-abortion extremists for influential roles in his administration, including Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Russell Vought as OMB Director, and John Sauer as Solicitor General—among much else.

And right now, Republicans in Congress are pushing through a budget reconciliation bill that would make abortion care impossible to access nearly everywhere by defunding Planned Parenthood—putting 200 health centers across the country at risk of closure and ripping away care from 1.1 million patients—and by effectively banning ACA marketplace health plans from covering abortion care. Overall, Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act would kick 16 million people off their health insurance through massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and overwhelmingly impact women, who comprise most adults covered by Medicaid. Medicaid is the primary source of coverage and the largest single payer for pregnant women’s health care nationwide, covering between one-third and one-half of births in every state across the country.