WASHINGTON, D.C. –Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley released the following statement on today’s ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt which challenged a Texas law severely limiting women’s access to reproductive health services:
“For more than four decades, politicians have consistently tried to put themselves in the exam room with women and their doctors. Today, the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected that approach and affirmed the constitutional right of women to make their own health care decisions. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is a hard and very personal one that should be made by a woman herself, not by politicians and judges. The rules in Texas were clearly designed not to protect women’s health but to control women’s decisions, and it’s important that the Court struck down that transparent effort to compromise women’s constitutional rights.”