Four Years After Dobbs, Senate Democrats Highlight The Deadly Impacts Of The GOP’s Escalating War On Women’s Health Care

Washington, D.C. - Four years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped away the constitutional right to abortion that had existed for nearly 50 years, gutting reproductive freedom. Since then, Republicans have only escalated their attacks on reproductive and basic health care, denying women life-saving care, ripping health care away from millions, and destroying families. This morning, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) will hold a press conference alongside reproductive freedom leaders to mark the grim fourth anniversary of the devastating Dobbs decision and to make clear that Republicans created this health crisis, they are still making it worse, and the fight to restore and protect abortion rights nationwide is more urgent than ever.

FOUR YEARS AFTER DEADLY DOBBS DECISION

Four years after the MAGA Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the crisis Republicans created is no longer theoretical - it is playing out in emergency rooms, exam rooms, and homes across America. Women have been denied life-saving care, forced to wait until they are near death, made to carry doomed pregnancies, and left bleeding, grieving, and traumatized because politicians banned doctors from doing their jobs. Clinics are closing, patients are forced to travel hundreds of miles, and basic reproductive health care is being pushed further out of reach.

This is the Republican post-Dobbs reality: cruel bans, dangerous delays, threatened doctors, and women's lives on the line. This is the deadly legacy of Dobbs.

THE NATIONWIDE TOLL

• 20 STATES now have total abortion bans or severe abortion restrictions.
• Nearly 40% of reproductive-age women - nearly 27 million women-live in states with bans, including more than half of Black women in the country.
• Nearly 63 million women and girls live in states with abortion bans or severe restrictions.
• More than 47 million women of reproductive age live in states where clinics have closed or where access to medication abortion is under attack.
• Women living in abortion ban states are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly after giving birth than women in states where abortion remains legal.
• Black mothers in abortion-ban states are 3.3 times more likely to die than white mothers in those states.
• In Texas, after the state's near-total abortion ban took effect, the rate of sepsis among women hospitalized for second-trimester pregnancy loss increased by more than 50%.

WHEN REPUBLICAN BANS BECOME REAL-LIFE HORROR STORIES

Behind every statistic is a woman, a family, a doctor, and a medical crisis made worse by Republican abortion bans:

• PBS News: Brain-dead woman must carry fetus to birth because of Georgia's abortion ban, hospital tells family
• BBC: She was denied an abortion in Texas - then she almost died
• People: Arkansas Woman Was Left Hemorrhaging During Miscarriage as Doctor Says 'Our Hands Are Tied' Due to Abortion Ban
• ProPublica: A Pregnant Woman at Risk of Heart Failure Couldn't Get Urgent Treatment. She Died Waiting for an Abortion.
• ProPublica: "Ticking Time Bomb": A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn't Get an Abortion in Texas.
• NPR: In Oklahoma, a woman was told to wait until she's 'crashing' for abortion care
• KSHB 41 Kansas City: Missouri woman with dying baby recalls being turned away for abortion health care at 2 hospitals
• CNN: A West Virginia prosecutor is warning women that a miscarriage could lead to criminal charges
• ABC News: Woman says she battles trauma, depression 1 year after not receiving abortion care under Florida law

REPUBLICANS ARE ENDANGERING WOMEN'S LIVES

This is what happens when politicians overrule doctors:

• Women experiencing miscarriages and pregnancy complications have been forced to wait until they are at the brink of death before receiving care because doctors feared criminal penalties.
• Women carrying pregnancies with fatal fetal diagnoses have been denied care, putting mothers' lives at risk.
• Patients are being forced to continue pregnancies despite knowing their babies could not survive.
• Women without the money, time, or ability to leave their states are being denied medically appropriate care and forced to endure preventable trauma.

REPUBLICANS ARE RIPPING AWAY BASIC HEALTH CARE, TOO

Republicans didn't stop at overturning Roe. They are now attacking the basic reproductive health care millions of patients rely on - including cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing, family planning, and preventive care.

Last year, in their "Big, Ugly Bill" Republicans and President Trump terminated Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health providers. As a result:

• More than 20 Planned Parenthood health centers have closed since the law was signed.
• More than 840,000 people have been put at risk of losing access to family planning and preventive health services because Title X funding was withheld.
• 15 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid or Affordable Care Act coverage.

WHEN REPUBLICANS DEFUND PROVIDERS, PATIENTS PAY THE PRICE

After Republicans cut funding to Planned Parenthood, patients lost access to essential care:

• Breast exam visits fell 25%.
• Visits for IUDs and other long-acting contraception fell 41%.
• STI testing dropped by 11%.
• Birth control pill visits dropped 20%.

REPUBLICANS ARE PUSHING EVEN FURTHER

Four years after Dobbs, Republicans are not backing down - they are escalating.

They are continuing to wage war on women's rights, women's health, and women's freedom by:

• Pushing new efforts to restrict or ban medication abortion nationwide, including restricting medication abortion via telehealth, mail, and other means so that it's effectively banned.
• Attacking mifepristone in courts and state legislatures using anti-abortion junk science to lay the groundwork for ripping lifesaving medication off the shelves.
• Pushing dangerous fetal personhood policies that threaten IVF and birth control.
• Attacking pregnant women's ability to receive lifesaving abortion care by rescinding Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance that reiterated hospitals' obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).
• Pushing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Four years after Dobbs, the consequences are clear: Republican abortion bans have turned pregnancy complications into legal emergencies, forced doctors to practice medicine under threat of prosecution, closed clinics, cut off basic health care, and put women's lives at risk.

Republicans created this crisis. They are making it worse. And they are not done.

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