Women's Health
For my entire career, I have worked to advance reproductive freedom. I will always remember the horrifying story of my friend’s back-alley abortion pre-Roe v. Wade. Roe was not the beginning of women having abortions, it was the end of women dying from abortions.
Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to enforce an antiquated law that bans nearly all abortions in the state. This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864—more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote.
On Friday, the Supreme Court granted the Department of Justice’s emergency stay application in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, preventing a lower court decision from going into effect that would have put women’s health at risk and undermined FDA’s medical judgment. For now, Mifepristone, which is used in 54% of all abortions, remains safe, legal, and available. But let me make it clear – the battle is not over. I will continue to fight and advocate for bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom.
This past week, I had the immense privilege of traveling to Nairobi, Kenya on a bipartisan trip with 17 of my Congressional colleagues. Africa’s unprecedented population growth will impact geopolitics, global trade, migration, and almost every aspect of life. By 2050, 1 in 4 people on Earth will be African. As policymakers, we have a duty to learn as much as we can about this booming continent.
Ahead of Labor Day, I was thrilled to welcome Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to Chicago to tout the Biden administration's efforts to help hardworking labor workers and retirees get the pension funds they deserve. The American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law last year, created a Special Financial Assistance (SFA) Program to avert the immediate multiemployer pension crisis threatening the retirement security of workers, retirees, and their families.
As a longtime consumer advocate, I have worked very closely with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which is tasked with keeping the public safe from consumer products that pose an unreasonable risk of injury or death. In addition to its own work, the CPSC relies on online marketplaces, like Meta, to keep consumers safe by preventing the posting for sale of products that are known to be dangerous.
In an increasingly digitized world, protecting consumers must be a top priority. Last month, I spoke at the White House to help launch the U.S. Cybersecurity Labeling Program for Consumer Technology, a crucial initiative that will protect Americans from cyberattacks by creating a safety label for devices that meet government cybersecurity standards. This label, the Cyber Trust Mark, will help consumers make informed purchasing decisions and incentivize manufacturers to meet higher cybersecurity standards, thus making our country more secure.
To finish out the legislative year in Washington, the House of Representatives voted on the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This bill authorizes a staggering $886 billion in new spending for the Department of Defense. Our greatest security threats have no military solutions, and it is time our budget reflected that. Therefore, I could not, in good faith, support its final passage.
In this week's video, I discuss women's heart health, Black History Month and the America COMPETES Act. I also share the latest on Medicare coverage for at-home COVID tests.