They’re making a risky bet on the federalization of abortion policy.
They’re making a risky bet on the federalization of abortion policy.
O ne of the more surprising developments of the week in Washington was the decision of groups that support an expansive right to abortion to lend their full support to Senate Democrats’ campaign against the filibuster.
EMILY’s List, the single biggest donor to Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema’s 2018 campaign, has historically backed any candidate who is a Democratic woman and supports a legal right to abortion. Sinema checks both boxes, but EMILY’s List announced this week that it will not support her in 2024 because of her support of the filibuster.
“Sen. Sinema’s decision to reject the voices of allies, partners and constituents who believe the importance of voting rights outweighs that of an arcane process means she will find herself standing alone in the next election,” EMILY’s List said in a statement. “Electing Democratic pro-choice women is not possible without free and fair elections.”
NARAL, the group formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League, also announced that it would not endorse Sinema or any other Senate candidate who supports the filibuster. “Our democracy is in peril,” NARAL’s president said in a statement. “We will not endorse or support any senator who refuses to find a path forward on this critical [voting] legislation.”
What makes this remarkable is that for many years, NARAL, EMILY’s List, and similar groups have viewed the filibuster as a crucial bulwark against pro-life laws.
“Abortion-rights groups concerned on filibuster reform,” read the headline on a 2011 Politico story. As recently as March 2021, the same outlet was reporting that those concerns still existed.
So what accounts for the shift? There are two explanations.
The first reason that NARAL and EMILY’s List flipped is that single-issue groups on both the right and the left are generally getting caught up in issues beyond their own mission. Stephen Gutowski, the author of The Reload newsletter, notes: “So many single-issue groups are just becoming general liberal or conservative groups. The ACLU is for gun control. Planned Parenthood is for a pathway to citizenship. The NRA is for border security. [Gun Owners of America] is against vaccine mandates.” You can chalk this trend up to America’s increasing political polarization and to the fact that many supposedly single-issue groups now share members and donors.
The second reason for the shift is that Democratic activists and donors see that the Supreme Court is likely to either overturn or pare back Roe, and they want to respond to such a ruling with legislation — the misleadingly named Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) — that would enshrine in federal law a sweeping nationwide right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. “We can’t count on Trump’s conservative Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade. It’s time to end the filibuster and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted on Friday.
The Democrats’ radical abortion bill does not currently have sufficient support to pass in the Senate. Pro-life Democrat Joe Manchin opposes it. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania hasn’t yet backed it, either, and Casey’s past vote for a 20-week national abortion ban would seem to suggest that won’t change. Susan Collins of Maine, one of two Senate Republicans who support Roe, says the WHPA is too extreme and goes far beyond Roe. The other GOP senator who supports Roe, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has not taken a position on the WHPA.
Even if they can’t currently pass the WHPA, Senate Democrats want to pass it at the first opportunity, i.e., whenever they next control the White House, the House, and the Senate and have the votes to kill the filibuster. Thus, there is a reason beyond coalition politics and log-rolling for abortion groups to ditch the filibuster. But they’re still making a risky long-term bet. It’s hard to see Senate Republicans ever striking first to abolish the 60-vote rule, and as long as the 60-vote rule remains intact, it’s hard to see Congress passing any significant federal law prohibiting abortions. If the Democrats eventually eliminate the filibuster and pass something like the WHPA, however, a subsequent GOP Congress will almost certainly establish a national limit on abortion.