New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday that he would file a lawsuit against the American Health Care Act to protect abortion rights.
“I hope the Senate will stop it, it’s bad public policy,” Schneiderman said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It doesn’t protect people with pre-existing conditions; it’ll cost millions of people healthcare.”
“But, if they pass the bill in the form the House passed it,” he said, “it is unconstitutional. It includes an unconstitutional attack on women’s rights to reproductive health services, including abortion.”
Schneiderman called the AHCA “bad public policy” and “unconstitutional” in its current state after the House passed it Thursday.
“In a tricky way, [it] tries to wipe out Planned Parenthood,” he said. “It’s an effort to kill off Planned Parenthood, which would impose an undue burden on women’s constitutionally-protected rights.”
“We are beseeching the Senate to make sure this never becomes the law of the land,” Schneiderman added.
Several Republican Senators warned that they would not pass the AHCA in its current state and would instead write their own bill.
“We cannot pull the rug out from under states like Nevada that expanded Medicaid, and we need assurances that people with pre-existing conditions will be protected,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) said in a statement.
President Trump, however, says he is “so confident” that the Senate will pass the AHCA even before the Congressional Budget Office releases their analysis estimating the law’s cost and impact on the nation.