SENATORS BLOCK BILL TO CODIFY RIGHT TO ABORTION
Vote falls well short of the 60 needed to advance legislation
The Senate on Wednesday did not advance legislation that would write a constitutional right to abortion into federal law — a symbolic gesture that Democrats cast as a first step in a larger strategy to mobilize Americans around reproductive rights as the Supreme Court considers overturning Roe v. Wade.
With 51 senators opposed and 49 in support, the vote was well short of the 60 votes necessary to take up the legislation under Senate rules. It was largely a reprise of a failed February vote staged by Senate Democratic leaders, but the issue has new resonance after last week’s leak of a draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito suggesting that the high court is poised to overturn Roe and curtail guaranteed nationwide access to abortions.
All 50 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed moving ahead on the bill. President Joe Biden said in a statement afterward that the vote “runs counter to the will of the majority of American people” and that congressional Republicans, who cast the Demo
cratic bill as a radical overreach, “have chosen to stand in the way of Americans’ rights to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies, families and lives.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have acknowledged that the move was about mobilizing voters, not passing legislation in a Congress where Democrats hold majorities but do not have the votes to defeat Republican filibusters or change the Senate rules to eliminate them.
“Elect more pro-choice Democrats if you want to protect a woman’s freedom and right to choose,” Schumer said after the vote. “Elect more MAGA Republicans if you want to see a nationwide ban on abortion, if you want to see doctors and women arrested, if you want to see no exceptions for rape or incest.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement that the fight for abortion rights was at “a tipping point” and promised a nationwide campaign of voter engagement, starting with rallies Saturday in dozens of U.S. cities. “We will not back down, and we will not forget those who put politics over our health and rights,” she said.
But signs abounded this week that, despite displays of anger and pledges to take action, Democrats have yet to coalesce around a strategy to spark and sustain a public backlash capable of pushing abortion rights back to center stage in American political life and motivating voters to turn out for the November midterm — and beyond — to elect candidates willing to defend them.
The lack of a long-range plan of action has become especially conspicuous after the leak of the draft opinion, which represented the culmination of a nearly 50-year effort by conservatives to reverse Roe and pave the way for state efforts to severely restrict or prohibit abortion.
In another internecine squabble, many Democrats responded to the draft opinion by calling on the Senate to again debate eliminating the filibuster — the 60-vote supermajority rule that allows a united minority to block most legislation — even though a January test vote on voting rights legislation showed that there is not enough support for it among Democratic senators.
A group of lawmakers has begun meeting to plan next steps on related measures, thinking about what the Democrats can advance via legislation or administration action. The effort is being led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and includes other female lawmakers in Democratic leadership: Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), according to a Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
But interviews with lawmakers this week revealed clashing views over how best to highlight the looming threat to abortion over the coming months, including whether to hold votes on narrower bills that would protect only a portion of the rights secured by Roe and related cases but could serve to more sharply highlight the depth of the Republican opposition.
One such decision was to call up a bill Wednesday, the Women’s Health Protection Act, that is substantively identical to the legislation that failed in February rather than consider alternatives that could have won support from the Senate’s two Republican supporters of abortion rights, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), or Manchin, who has campaigned as an opponent of abortion rights but signaled Wednesday that he would be open to preserving the status quo.
Collins and Murkowski objected to a lack of religious freedom protections in the Democratic bill — a notion Democratic leaders contest — and no serious effort was made to address their concerns, senators and aides involved in the issue said.
However, party leaders agreed to drop some fact-finding language from the bill, softening some of its partisan edges. On Tuesday, one Democrat who previously had withheld public support for the bill, Sen. Bob Casey (Pa.), announced his backing.
Manchin, however, did not, telling reporters Wednesday that the current bill “expands” abortion rather than preserving it.