AFT’s Weingarten Reacts to Failed Vote on Women’s Health Protection Act

WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the U.S. Senate failed to take action on S. 4132, the Women’s Health Protection Act:

“At a time when a radical bloc of Supreme Court justices are preparing to overturn 50 years of precedent and erode our freedoms in the most personal and intimate aspects of our lives, not one Republican senator would vote with American women and their families to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law. 

“Regardless of whether you support a woman’s right to choose, jettisoning decades of established law and precedent risks the safety and health of women and girls—especially low-income women, rural women and women of color. It also raises the question of what’s at risk next: The freedom to marry? The right to use contraception or to use reproductive technologies to conceive? The right for all students to be educated?

“America is at its best when expanding and deepening our freedoms. Today Republicans could have supported this, but instead they chose to allow the decimation of hard-won rights.”