Senate Vote Pledged To Make’ Roe v. Wade’ Permanent Law

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Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised that the U.S. Senate will hold a vote on proposed legislation that would formally make abortion rights a specific part of federal law. For such a measure to pass would mean that abortion access would be at least temporarily free from obstruction by conservative judges. Presently, the legally established nationwide right to an abortion hinges on judicial decision-making regarding already established law rather than specific provisions of federal law.

Schumer remarked as follows:

‘A vote on this legislation is not an abstract exercise, this is as urgent and real as it gets… We will vote to protect a woman’s right to choose and every American is going to see [on] which side every senator stands… To the American people, I say this: the elections this November will have consequences because the rights of 100 million women are now on the ballot. To help fight this court’s awful decision, I urge every American to make their voices heard this week and this year.’

Schumer, of course, pledged that such a vote would be held in the wake of the emergence of a draft majority opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court that indicated that a majority of Justices were prepared to overturn the court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, which laid out nationwide abortion rights. The new case that gave rise to the draft majority opinion deals with a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is earlier than states have ordinarily been allowed to ban the procedure. Among other abortion restrictions, Florida recently imposed a similar ban that includes no exceptions for cases involving rape, incest, or human trafficking. Across the country, Republican officials in dozens of states are poised to jump at the opportunity to ban abortions — undoing the Supreme Court’s Roe decision would leave decision-making regarding abortion access to states. There’s still time for the alignment of the Justices on this issue to shift — there’s not yet a final decision.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also backed urgently moving forward with voting on a proposal to formally include the rights established by the Roe decision in federal law. “I think we need to once again bring the Women’s Health Protection Act up for a vote that would guarantee that Roe v. Wade would be the law of the land… Our Republican colleagues have, very sadly for the women of America, been blocking that from coming up to a vote. But I believe we need to immediately call it up for a vote again,” she said. The bill Klobuchar referenced is not supported by two Democrats: West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey. Thus, there’d be another hurdle for its supporters to overcome even if the problem of the Senate’s filibuster rules was handled. Manchin recently indicated he’s not in favor of altering those rules to allow abortion rights protections to pass. The provisions require that 60 Senators in the 100-member chamber agree before moving forward with most proposed legislation.