Hillary Clinton spoke out this week on the anniversary of the now overturned decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, which originally established a national foundation in law for abortion access before it was unceremoniously undone with three Justices originally nominated by Donald Trump on the bench in 2022.
“Today, we should be marking 51 years of Roe v. Wade and the promise of reproductive freedom for all. Instead, Donald Trump took away women’s right to make personal choices and gave that power to Republican judges and politicians. That is his legacy,” Clinton said Monday on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter.
Data ranging from polling to the more compelling and impactful category of election results has shown large portions of Americans still supporting access to abortion beyond some Republicans’ clearly sought limits in the time since Roe was overturned.
Just late last year, Ohio voters passed an amendment to their state Constitution that was set to establish a baseline of abortion protections in the state, adding to state-level efforts to fill in the sudden gap left at the federal level. Trump himself, meanwhile, has taken ownership of the eventual dismantling of the nation’s wider-reaching legal allowances for abortion, clearly setting up this year’s elections as also a referendum on which vision in health care will advance in the U.S.
At present, the filibuster rules in the Senate, which demand a 60-vote majority before moving forward in many areas, would presumably curtail ambitions of enacting particularly sweeping restrictions at the national level on abortion, which is also technically an option after the Supreme Court dismantled the prior legal framework. But what would stop a theoretical GOP majority in the Senate in the future from moving forward with filibuster changes on even a single-issue basis like Democrats unsuccessfully tried to do at one point with voting rights? There are clearly openings for developments dangerous towards the free access of what until semi-recently were widely available health care procedures.
