Hoyer Statement on Bill Restricting Women’s Access to Health Care in the Puerto Rico Senate
“I was deeply disturbed to learn that a Senate Commission in the Puerto Rico legislature, controlled by the island’s Republican-affiliated party, advanced a bill through that would ban safe abortions after twenty-two weeks, without any public testimony or consideration. This is part of a broader Republican assault on women’s rights and women’s access to reproductive health care, which includes Texas’s infamous legislation that seeks to sow terror against women who seek abortion care and similar measures advancing in other states. American women – including Puerto Rican women, who are American citizens – deserve to have access to the full range of health care services, and it ought to be up to them to make decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy to term – not up to politicians. I join with Rep. Nydia Velazquez, with the Democratic Women’s Caucus, and with the House Pro-Choice Caucus in condemning this legislation and urging the Puerto Rico Senate not to allow it to advance any further."