Prez, blue-state heads vow to protect abortion
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden urged the election of more lawmakers who support abortion rights and said he’d seek to enshrine the protections of Roe v Wade into US law, following a report that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the ruling.
“At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday. That’s an unlikely outcome. Writing the protections of the Roe v Wade decision into US statute would be one of the most difficult legislative battles of the modern era. Under current rules, abortion rights-supporting Democrats and the few Republicans who ally with them would need to hold at least 60 seats in the Senate to pass the bill.
A House-passed bill to codify Roe was blocked in February in the Senate on a 46-48 vote. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat who has obstructed much of Biden’s agenda, voted with Republicans to filibuster the measure.
Additionally, some key supporters of abortion rights - Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - have long opposed changing the 60-vote threshold for advancing such bills. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer
said on Tuesday in remarks from the Senate floor that he would soon force another vote on legislation to codify Roe.
A decision to overturn Roe could reverberate through the 2024 presidential campaign and magnify attention on gubernatorial and legislative races across the country, as it would give states more power to decide the legality of abortions.
Blue-state governors and politicians hailed their commitment to reproductive rights leak on Monday, inviting residents of states with restrictive abortion access to seek care inside their borders instead.
“I refuse to let my new granddaughter have to fight for the rights that generations have fought for & won, rights that she should be guaranteed,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said. “For anyone who needs access to care, our state will welcome you with open arms. Abortion will always be safe & accessible in New York.”
New York is among Democratic-leaning states that have codified the right to abortion in state law in anticipation of Roe v. Wade getting overturned. Meanwhile, states like Florida and Oklahoma are feverishly passing more restrictive abortion bills.
In Connecticut, which passed state laws granting abortion rights in 1990, Democratic Governor Ned Lamont said the state would do “everything in our power to defend abortion.” Last month, state lawmakers passed a bill intended to protect Connecticut’s
abortion providers from out-of-state lawsuits.
Blue states have also sought to position themselves as safe havens for residents in red states that have made abortion access more restrictive. But many people won’t be able to travel in order to get an abortion. More than 40 million women between ages 13 and 44 live in states with restrictive abortion rights, costing those economies $105 billion annually by cutting labour force participation and earnings, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
Women who want an abortion but don’t get one are four times more likely to live below the federal poverty level, as per the University of California San Francisco.