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Press Release
NARAL Pro-Choice America Reminds Voters: Sen. Rubio Betrayed Floridians By Voting to Confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Contact: [email protected]
Washington, DC — Today marks three years since Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) voted to confirm anti-choice, anti-freedom ideologue Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Today’s anniversary comes at a critical moment in the fight for reproductive freedom.
Sen. Rubio’s vote for Brett Kavanaugh helped cement a Supreme Court supermajority hostile to reproductive freedom that will soon have an opportunity to dismantle the legal right to abortion. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade—all eyes are on the senators who voted to confirm Trump’s anti-choice Supreme Court justices.
NARAL Pro-Choice America Acting President Adrienne Kimmell released the following statement:
“Simply put, Sen. Marco Rubio’s vote to confirm Kavanaugh put our fundamental freedoms at risk like never before. We cannot—and will not—stop working to hold him and the Senate Republicans accountable for threatening reproductive freedom. NARAL Pro-Choice America and our 2.5 million members will continue to use our voices and our votes to defend our freedom to make our own decisions about our lives, families, and futures.”
Earlier this month, Kavanaugh cast one of the deciding votes in the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’ draconian and unconstitutional SB 8, a vigilante-enforced ban on abortion care before many people even know they are pregnant. Since then, Florida became the first state to introduce copycat legislation using Texas’ abortion ban as a blueprint to attack abortion access.
This summer, Sen. Rubio signed an amicus brief in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case with 227 other anti-choice members of Congress calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. Since Sen. Rubio voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh has consistently undermined reproductive freedom. In 2020, Kavanaugh wrote a dissent in opposition to the Court’s majority ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo, a case striking down Louisiana’s unconstitutional clinic shutdown law. That same year, Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion in Trump v. Pennsylvania in support of the Trump administration’s attacks on birth control coverage.
Since Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation tipped the balance of the bench to an anti-choice majority, lawmakers hostile to abortion went into overdrive to push to end Roe once and for all. Anti-choice state lawmakers have already introduced, advanced, or passed more than 330 state bills attacking abortion access in 2021. This year, over 106 restrictions on abortion access have been enacted at the state level, making it the worst year for abortion rights since Roe was decided.
Already in Florida, pregnant people are subject to severe restrictions on abortion access, including mandatory biased counseling, a forced ultrasound, and barriers that push access to care out of reach for many.
NARAL Pro-Choice America and its 2.5 million members are actively fighting back, running a national electoral program designed to reach, persuade, and mobilize key voters to hold Sen. Rubio and other politicians accountable for their unyielding attacks on reproductive freedom.
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For over 50 years, 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, paid family leave, and protections from pregnancy discrimination—for every body. NARAL is powered by its more than 2.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support safe, legal abortion.