Mitch McConnell Thinks He Knows Better Than Your Doctor

Imagine, just for a moment, that you’re at the doctor’s office. It’s just you and your doctor, having a private, confidential conversation about your health. You feel safe. You feel informed. You feel in control.

And then — BOOM — the door bursts open, and Mitch McConnell steps inside. Yep, that Mitch McConnell. The anti-abortion, anti-women Senate Majority Leader just interrupted a private conversation between you and your doctor. What the heck?

Mitch McConnell thinks he knows better than your doctor. 

Okay, now back to reality. While it’s unlikely that McConnell will actually disrupt your medical appointments, his most recent scheme interferes with your health, privacy, and autonomy in a similar way.

Back in October, McConnell's extreme colleagues in the House passed a dangerous nationwide 20-week abortion ban. Now, the bill has been introduced in the Senate — meaning that McConnell and other anti-women politicians will try their hardest to pass it.

And they’re not stopping there. In addition to the 20-week ban, extremists in the House just held a hearing for another dangerous ban on abortion at six weeks — before most women even know they’re pregnant.

Trent Franks (R-AZ) is just one anti-women politician who wants to pass these dangerous bans.

There’s nothing reasonable about either of these abortion bans. They aren’t constitutional, or even popular. A solid 60 percent of voters — Democrats and Republicans alike — oppose 20-week bans, as well as the leading OBGYNs in the country.

That’s because these bills take decision-making away from patients and their doctors, and put it in the hands of politicians like McConnell, whose ultimate goal is to ban abortion completely.

And unfortunately, we’re not talking hypothetically here. In states that have passed similar bans, people have been forced to travel out of state or be denied access to safe, legal abortion.

And it gets worse. These bans prohibit doctors from providing care even if the pregnancy is diagnosed with serious fetal anomalies. It also shames survivors of rape or incest by requiring them to prove that they reported the crime to police before getting an abortion.

Women should never have to justify their personal medical decisions. The reality is that abortion later in pregnancy is very rare and often happens under complex circumstances where the woman’s health is at stake— the kind of situations where she needs every medical option available.

Patient advocate Evelyn made the deeply personal decision to have a safe, legal abortion later in pregnancy.

All year, McConnell has tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and attack abortion access — things he’s been talking about doing for the past eight years. But he’s failed every time.

So make no mistake: GOP leaders are desperate for a win. We have no reason to doubt they’ll continue to put people’s health on the line, all in order to push their broader agenda of attacking women’s health.

And you know what’s really scary? Donald Trump said that if the Senate passes the 20-week abortion ban, he’ll sign it into law.

We can't let these dangerous bans anywhere near Donald Trump. 

Mitch McConnell needs to STOP playing games with these extreme attacks on our health care. We MUST keep decisions about our health between us and our doctors.