Press Release National
Press Release
“A Once-In-A-Lifetime Leader” — Reproductive Freedom For All Reacts to Pelosi’s Retirement
For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 6, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
“A Once-In-A-Lifetime Leader” — Reproductive Freedom For All Reacts to Pelosi’s Retirement
Washington, DC — Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement after nearly four decades in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Reproductive Freedom for All, President and CEO Mini Timmaraju released the following statement:
“Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ leader and a champion for reproductive freedom. Since the beginning of her career, she has led with courage, conviction, and an unwavering commitment to protecting the rights of not only Californians but of all Americans. She has inspired women across the country, paving the way for a new generation of leaders and activists, myself included.
As a longtime advocate for the reproductive freedom movement, she has championed legislation to protect access to abortion on the House floor and has made abortion a salient issue for voters nationwide. As Speaker, she led the first proactive vote on abortion access in 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
She will forever stand as a model of grit, vision, and true leadership. On behalf of myself and our millions of members across the country, we thank her for her decades of extraordinary public service and her unwavering commitment to freedom and equality.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was the first woman to ever serve as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democratic leader for over two decades. Speaker Pelosi was the chief architect of the landmark Affordable Care Act (ACA), which stands among Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as a pillar of families’ health and financial security. She engineered the final passage of the ACA in the House—without the help of a single Republican vote.
When the most extreme abortion ban was signed into law in Texas in 2021, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi led efforts in Congress to take action to advance the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA)— a bill that would safeguard the federal right to abortion against bans and medically unnecessary restrictions. And later that year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed WHPA in a historic vote. This was the first time ever that Congress voted on proactive, standalone legislation to protect abortion rights.
From passing the Affordable Care Act to leading the House through an unprecedented abortion rights and access crisis, Speaker Pelosi’s legacy is extraordinary.
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For more than 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.