6 Times Elizabeth Warren Dropped the Mic Slamming Republicans Over Planned Parenthood

Yesterday during the Senate's absurd vote on whether or not to restrict access to birth control, STI testing, and cancer screening, Elizabeth Warren brought the rain. In an impassioned 6-minute speech, she laid out her reasons for standing with Planned Parenthood, and subsequently her reasons for why I would drop everything and follow her into war if she asked me to. Here are all the ways she dropped the mic on this illogical attack.

1. "Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s?"

 

2. "The Republican vote to defund Planned Parenthood is just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated, right-wing attack on women's rights. And I'm sick and tired of it."

 

 

3. "Scheduling this vote during the week of a big Fox News Presidential primary debate...isn't just some clever gimmick."

This vote is very conveniently timed, and Warren isn't afraid to point it out. The 53 members of the Senate who voted yesterday to defund Planned Parenthood are either genuinely opposed to women having access to health services, or (more likely) they know that they can win political points by putting women's health on the chopping block.

 

4. "One in five women in America is a Planned Parenthood patient at least once in her life... More than half of Planned Parenthood centers are located in areas without ready access to health care."

Reminding us what's at stake here, Warren points out that Planned Parenthood isn't just some fringe clinic that wouldn't be missed if it were defunded. More than 10% of our nation's population has been to Planned Parenthood for preventive care or treatment. Not only that, but they serve populations that might not have any other options within a reasonable distance. 

 

 

5. "Just to be clear: even though the abortions performed at Planned Parenthood are both safe and legal, the federal government is not paying for any of them. Not. One. Dime."

The money Planned Parenthood gets from the federal government comes primarily in the form of Medicaid so low-income women can have access to health services and from Title X money for birth control for low-income women. Except in extreme cases, not a single cent of federal money has been used to pay for abortions in the 42 years that abortion has been legal.

 

6, "I want to say to my Republican colleagues: the year is 2015. Not 1955, and not 1895. Women have lived through a world where backward-looking idealogues tried to interfere with the basic health decisions made by a woman and her doctor, and we are not going back. Not now. Not ever."

Ever since the Supreme Court decided that women had a right to prevent pregnancy, women have become more and more liberated. Our very right to have a sexuality was confirmed in Griswold v. Connecticut, so much so that that 1965 case was cited heavily in the recent Supreme Court decision that gave same-sex couples the right to marry. We can't and won't go back to the way it was before. Thank you to Senator Warren and her 45 colleagues who stood with women yesterday.

Here's Warren in full.