GOP Blocks Bill Protecting Right to Travel for Abortion

Democratic leaders and reproductive rights advocates swiftly blasted anti-choice Republican lawmakers on Thursday after U.S. Sen. James Lankford blocked a bill intended to protect the right of pregnant people across the country to travel for abortion services.

The GOP senator from Oklahoma—which banned nearly all abortions this year even before the Roe v. Wade reversal—objected to Democrats’ effort to pass by unanimous consent the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022.

Introduced this week by Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Patty Murray (Wash.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), the bill would make clear that patients can cross state lines for abortion care and empower the U.S. attorney general and affected individuals to take legal action against those who attempt to restrict that right.

While Lankford took action to block the bill, its sponsors and other supporters emphasized that his party is behind the ongoing and sweeping assault on reproductive rights on a national scale.

Murray took aim at her GOP colleagues on the Senate floor, declaring that “Republican lawmakers have already set their sights on ripping away the right to travel. Let’s be really clear what that means: They want to hold women captive in their own states.”

Cortez Masto similarly said that “by objecting to my legislation, they’re allowing state legislators to reach across state lines to control not just what happens in their states, but what happens in every state across this country and to punish women for exercising their fundamental rights. It’s absolutely outrageous.”

Right-wing groups and state lawmakers are already working on legislation to try to stop residents of states hostile to abortion rights from traveling for care.

Despite the bill’s defeat on Thursday, Cortez Masto vowed that “I won’t stop fighting for women’s freedom.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.