Democrats around the nation are raging at their own party right now over what they perceive to be a failure to act to protect abortion access in the country. Now they are trying to quell the masses with a doomed, last minute bill to codify abortion as a right, something they could have done successfully in the past when they had super majorities.
Now the Senate Dems are pushing a law to make abortion a right nationwide in the form of The Women’s Health Protection Act, which passed the House late last year after Texas took action to restrict abortion access but failed to make any waves in the Senate.
The new bill would allow a woman to get an abortion if any “health care provider” determines that pregnancy would “pose a risk” to the mother or child. These terms are very loose and leave room for interpretation, including, but not limited to: health, age, family history, physical damage, emotional damage, and psychological damage. The bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate even said it was meant to be applied “liberally” by the determining health care provider.
John McCormack, the Washington correspondent at National Review, even suggested that Democrat candidates for the US Senate are pushing to extend the bill even further and make abortion a right through ALL 9 months of the pregnancy.
The biggest problem here for the Democrats in the Senate, aside from moral arguments, is their thin majority in the 50-50 Senate. For the Senate to even take up this bill, it would currently require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and it is very unlikely that they would get 10 Republicans on their side. They also could need even more Republican votes if Pro-Life Democrat Joe Manchin refuses to join their vote.
Of course, the Democrats could in theory kill the filibuster, but even then they would need Manchin and Krysten Sinema to do so, and both have declared adamantly that they will not end the right to filibuster regardless of the situation. Democrats have been trying to end filibustering for several months with the hope of stacking the Supreme Court in their favor before Republicans likely take back over Congress in 2023.
Democrats are determined now to try and codify abortion as right, something they could have done during Clinton or Obama’s first terms but refused to act. Do you think they are serious this time or are they only doing it now because they know it will fail but they can pretend like they actually made an attempt?
