Republicans just passed $1 trillion in health care cuts and are kicking roughly 15 million people off their health care; Republican bill bans Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement funding—threatening to shutter clinics across the country
ICYMI on Friday: Senator Murray Statement on Trump Ripping Away Access to Abortion Care for Women Veterans Who Were Raped or Whose Health is in Danger
***WATCH FULL EVENT HERE; PHOTOS AND B-ROLL HERE***
Seattle, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a roundtable discussion with patient advocates and health care providers from Washington state and Idaho to discuss how recent moves by President Trump and Republicans in Congress to attack access to health care—especially reproductive health care—and slash Medicaid are harming people in Washington state and across the entire Pacific Northwest.
Joining Senator Murray for the event were; Rebecca Gibron, CEO, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky; Dr. Keemi Ereme, OB/GYN at UW Medicine and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, family physician from rural Idaho and co-president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare; Kayla Smith, a patient storyteller who traveled to Washington from Idaho for necessary abortion care and former plaintiff in Adkins v. State of Idaho; Emily Cuarenta, a patient storyteller and student at Eastern Washington University; and Heather Mullin, a patient storyteller and local advocate from the Seattle area.
“The horror stories caused by abortion bans have not stopped since Republicans ended the right to abortion, implemented cruel bans, and plunged this country into a full-blown health care crisis. And unfortunately, Republican attacks on abortion care have not stopped. Republicans passed devastating new attacks on health care and reproductive rights as part of their Big Ugly bill, which ‘defunds’ Planned Parenthood—a longtime dream for the far right and an absolute nightmare for everyone else. Clinics will close, putting abortion care, birth control services, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and other basic preventive care out of reach for millions of women,” said Senator Murray. “And let’s not forget all the other ways Trump and Republicans are attacking abortion. Trump ripped away protections ensuring women can get abortion care to save their lives. He put in place a near-total abortion ban for veterans and servicemembers at DoD and VA. He and Republicans are packing our courts with the most radical anti-abortion extremists. Meanwhile, Republicans are still trying to rip away access to safe medication abortion and advance dangerous ‘fetal personhood’ provisions, and they are still trying to ban abortion nationwide and put women and doctors in jail—blatantly overriding the will of the American people.”
“But we are still pushing back and fighting for reproductive rights in every way we can,” Senator Murray continued. “As Appropriations Vice Chair, I am working to reject Trump’s proposal to slash Title X and eliminate the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, among other awful ideas. The funding bill we passed out of committee last week funds these programs. Democrats are pushing to reverse the damage from Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, so we can restore Planned Parenthood funds, save patients from losing care, and save hospitals. And we are keeping our spotlight on how Republicans’ anti-abortion extremism is hurting women every day. From abortion care to rural hospitals, health care is under attack here in America. The fight to change this is today and every day until we can reverse these cuts and keep making progress.”
Defunding Planned Parenthood puts at least 200 health centers across the country at risk of closure—90 percent of them in states where abortion is legal—and will rip away health care for more than 1.1 million people, many of whom might not be able to get care anywhere else. Every year, Planned Parenthood provides health care to more than two million people, including STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, birth control, HPV vaccines, wellness exams and other critical services. Recent research from the Guttmacher Institute found that, contrary to Republicans’ claims, Federally Qualified Health Centers do not have the capacity to readily serve the millions of people who currently rely on Planned Parenthood for care. Defunding Planned Parenthood will cost an estimated $261 million over the next decade.
President Trump also has taken direct aim at reproductive health care in the first few months of his term through a multitude of executive actions—issuing anti-choice executive orders, pardoning violent anti-abortion extremists, and taking a host of other actions to roll back efforts to protect access to reproductive health care across the country. On Friday, the Trump administration moved to revoke women veterans’ ability to receive abortion care through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when their pregnancy is putting their health at risk, or is the result of rape or incest, which Senator Murray swiftly condemned as an attack on the reproductive rights of women veterans.
“In the fall of 2022, my husband and I found out we were pregnant again with our second child. And this was just after Roe was overturned,” Kayla Smith, a patient storyteller and former plaintiff in Adkins v. State of Idaho. Kayla was Senator Patty Murray’s State of the Union guest last year. “The only thing that we were concerned about was preeclampsia, because that was what I had dealt with before in my prior pregnancy. And then, the day after the trigger law went into effect to ban abortion in the State of Idaho, we found out that our son had several fatal fetal anomalies. And so our maternal fetal medicine specialist shared with us that, unfortunately, if we wanted to end this very wanted pregnancy, that she would no longer be able to help us in the state of Idaho… We had to take out a $16,000 personal loan to drive eight hours from Idaho here, actually to the University of Washington… It was the most tragic thing we ever had to deal with to make that decision, but then to also be forced to flee our state to have to go somewhere else to get care that we should have gotten was just devastating… In that moment, I did not want an abortion, but I needed one. And I felt like my providers were not able to give me that standard of care that should be available to everyone… These abortion bans are not saving lives, they are actually putting more lives at risk.”
“Access to safe and legal abortion through Planned Parenthood saved my life,” said Heather Mullin, a patient storyteller and local advocate from the Seattle area. “I was the victim of a predator who was a respected person in our community and used his position of power and access to harm children. He once told me that he had noticed me when I was in the sixth grade, which makes me about 11 years old. I was repeatedly sexually assaulted from the age of 13 until I became pregnant when I was 15. And I knew that when I became pregnant at the time that I was not going to have the baby. I felt very afraid and alone, and I didn’t want my abuser’s baby to be my life sentence. So, I sought out a legal and safe abortion at Planned Parenthood. I took the bus during spring break of my freshman year of high school, when my parents thought I was at track practice. And I got an abortion, and nobody knew about it for a really long time—and I didn’t really talk about it publicly until the Dobbs decision. And I really felt it was important for people to know that all sorts of reasons there are for having an abortion, that you probably know someone who has had an abortion. And when I started talking about my story, I realized it was really a much more common experience than we sometimes think about and talk about. In our current state where we have outright abortion bans, including no exclusions for rape or incest, we’re talking about forcing children to give birth. And that’s the kind of thing that really keeps me up tonight, and why I’m here today to talk about the importance of funding abortion care and access to abortion. It’s disturbing to me that some of our government officials seem to be protecting predators instead of victims.”
“Before the ban on abortion care in the state, I was able to help my patients through deeply personal and often complicated decisions, in the privacy of an ER bay or exam room. Even our ability to do the jobs we were trained to do in time-sensitive and health-threatening emergencies, such as bleeding or infection or organ failure, put us in the crosshairs. Would we provide the stabilizing care they needed in their community healthcare system, with the providers they know and trust, and where their support system is in place for them, but risk going to jail for doing so?,” said Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, a family medicine obstetrician in rural Idaho for two decades and President of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation, representing over 1,500 Idaho healthcare professionals and concerned community members. “A maternal health care crisis has ensued. The longer Idahoans must travel out of state to get the care they need, not only will we face increasing maternal health complications, but also worsening physician shortages. By 15 months after the Dobbs decision and the Idaho trigger ban going into effect, nearly a quarter of my OBGYN colleagues and more than half of the maternal fetal medicine specialists I previously referred my patients with high-risk pregnancy conditions to stop practicing obstetrics in our state; and we have been unable to recruit physicians to replace them because of the chilling effect of these abortion bans. And it got worse after the initial exodus: In a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week by an Idaho colleague of mine, Idaho has suffered 35 percent net decline in OB/GYNs who practice obstetrics in Idaho since Idaho’s abortion bans went into effect. What this has meant is that Idaho continues to lose much needed medical professionals that are the cornerstones of women’s healthcare, not just during pregnancy, but across the entire lifespan. For example, I have patients suffering from post-menopausal bleeding who must wait months to get into an OBGYN to consult for the hysterectomy that they need. The reduction in this workforce further threatens healthcare access, not just for women but for all Idahoans. With pending Medicaid cuts looming, our ability to do our jobs to keep our communities safe and healthy will become that much more difficult.”
“Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington provide high quality reproductive health care to more than 100,000 patients every year, including patients who come across state lines because their state has eliminated preventive care access and banned abortions entirely. But care in Washington is at risk like it is everywhere else: the Republican budget bill will eliminate health insurance for tens of thousands of Washingtonians, and will defund Planned Parenthood by banning us from Medicaid,” said Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky. “Without support from state and local governments to fill the gap, health centers in Washington will close and patients will lose access to care. We are thankful to Senator Murray for being the national leader on reproductive health and rights as she fights to restore funding and reverse the ban, and we are thankful for leaders in Washington who are committed to finding local revenue to keep our doors open.”
“My husband serves in the Air Force, and attacks on reproductive freedom and access to health care feel like a slap in the face. We worry about the hostility of the next state we are stationed in,” said Emily Cuarenta, a student at Eastern Washington University who lives with her husband on an Air Force base in Spokane. Emily spoke about the abortion care she received in Georgia prior to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, where she was forced to travel and undergo a waiting period, an ultrasound, and medically inaccurate counseling that misinformed her about the risks of having an abortion. “The Dobbs decision opened the floodgates to oppressive, medically inaccurate laws that endanger the lives of pregnant people. In addition to suffering poor maternal health outcomes, pregnant people now fear criminalization of their pregnancy outcomes.”
“This legislation strips people of their access to reproductive healthcare, their choices in family planning and their fundamental human right to health care. This legislation will lead to many preventable deaths, and that is simply unacceptable,” said Dr. Keemi Ereme, an OB/GYN at UW Medicine and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Senator Murray has been the leading voice in the Senate speaking out and raising the alarm against Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood through their One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She has held constant recent events—including multiple events in Washington state—to sound the alarm on the devastating cuts in Republicans’ reconciliation bill. As the Senate was considering the legislation, Senator Murray put forward an amendment to strike a provision of the legislation that achieves anti-abortion extremists’ long-sought goal of “defunding” Planned Parenthood; Republicans blocked the amendment. Recently, Senator Murray introduced legislation to reverse the massive health care cuts Republicans passed into law last month and restore federal Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
Senator Murray is a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights, and she has led Congressional efforts to fight back after the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Murray has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; Murray has led efforts to push for passage of these bills on the floor multiple times. Last January, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Murray led her colleagues in hosting a “State of Abortion Rights” briefing with women who have suffered firsthand from Republican abortion bans, and last June, she chaired a HELP Committee hearing titled “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America.” Recently, Murray helped lead efforts to force Republicans on the record on votes to protect access to contraception and access to IVF (twice) last year, and she led her colleagues in raising the alarm about the threat a second Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights and abortion access in every state, as outlined in Project 2025. At a forum Senator Murray held this year on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Senator Murray spoke about Republicans’ plan to institute a backdoor nationwide abortion ban, including by defunding Planned Parenthood.
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