Patty Murray Quotes

I have been fighting to protect women's healthcare and reproductive rights for decades.

Decades ago, women suffered through horrifying back-alley abortions. Or, they used dangerous methods when they had no other recourse. So when the Republican Party launched an all-out assault on women's health, pushing bills to limit access to vital services, we had to ask: Why is the GOP trying to send women back... to the back alley?

Trying to block women from getting access to contraception or defunding Planned Parenthood is completely nonsensical from a policy standpoint.

It is essential that the women's preventive coverage benefit, including contraception, be available to all women, regardless of what health plan they have or where they work - as Congress intended. Providing access to birth control just makes good sense.

It pains me deeply to see members of my own party attempting to legislate women's health and contraception choices.

When the health of a woman is involved I think the government has to be respectful.

We support reproductive rights and will stand with women and men around the country to support keeping abortion and birth control safe, legal and accessible.

House Republicans continue to vote to repeal health care reform, not only removing guarantees that women aren't charged more than men for coverage, but also assuring the world knows they don't believe women should have control over their own health care decisions.

Americans are guaranteed the constitutional right to legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, and it's past time for Republicans to stop using the issue as a political football. In fact, it's past time for Republican politicians to stop interfering in women's personal lives, period.

I still support Planned Parenthood personally because they do a good job providing health care for women, have for generations in my congressional district.

We should not continue to play politics with women's health.

We are supposed to be liberated in America but if our President [George W. Bush] had his way, we wouldn't be educated about sex at all. Every woman would have six children and we wouldn't be able to have abortions.

I have a daughter and I have granddaughters and I will never vote to let a group of backward-looking ideologues cut women's access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we are not going back, not ever

I'll protect and expand access to no-copay birth control and safe, legal abortion.

President Obama is also standing up for women in North Carolina and across our country. He has helped women fight for equal pay for equal work; he has fought to guarantee that women have access to quality, affordable health care, including making sure that insurance plans cover birth control with no out-of-pocket cost.

How did abortion and birth control impact the congressional race of Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle or the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? I don't know. But I think the so-called social issues were front and center in the minds of voters. These issues may indeed have lost the Republicans some elections.

The Republican Party needs to, first of all, quit electing people in primaries that have prehistoric notions about women's issues.

I have consistently supported laws ensuring women are able to make their own health care decisions, and I will continue to protect women's access to contraceptives and reproductive health care.

There is no war on women. Women are doing well. But women are thoughtful. And what we in the Republican Party and across the country, Republican, Independents and Democrat women say is we're more thoughtful than a label. We care about jobs and the economy and healthcare and education. We care about a lot of different things.

In the last two years, the amount of legislation in the House of Representatives and state legislatures has been really unprecedented, that has focused on reproductive rights.

Do you honestly think that if Senator Santorum becomes president, we're going to get rid of contraceptives?

Empowering women by allowing them to choose when and how many children to have is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.

Restricting access to such a basic health care service, which 99% of sexually experienced American women have used and 62% of American women are using right now, is out of touch with public sentiment.

In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women's rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States.

When you see the political parties squabble, if a baby is not allowed to be born, all the other issues do not come into play.