They are two Senate seats and a House majority away from creating a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, even with today’s ruling.
They are two Senate seats and a House majority away from creating a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, even with today’s ruling.
A fter the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned authority to set abortion policy to the American people and their elected representatives, congressional Democrats and President Biden vowed Friday that they would enact a radical federal abortion law if they keep the House and gain a couple more seats in the U.S. Senate in November.
“This race is about all of our rights,” Democratic Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan said in a tweet. “I’m fighting to abolish the filibuster and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act to protect abortion access.”
The so-called Women’s Health Protection Act would effectively create a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states. Democrats often suggest that the bill merely protects a right to elective abortion until 23 weeks of pregnancy, though that itself is a radical policy: Only seven countries in the world, including North Korea and Communist China, allow elective abortion later than 20 weeks. But, as this National Review editorial explained, the WHPA really extends a right to abortion all the way through nine months:
When Democrats in Washington speak of “codifying Roe,” what they mean in plain English is protecting a right to kill a baby through all nine months for virtually any reason. The WHPA creates an absolute right to abortion through the first five to six months of pregnancy, and it mandates legal abortion after viability until birth whenever a lone health-care provider — a term not limited to doctors — determines that the continuation of the pregnancy “would pose a risk” to the patient’s life or “health.” The WHPA’s chief sponsor in the Senate has acknowledged that the legislation “doesn’t distinguish” between physical and mental health, and the text of the bill instructs the courts to “liberally construe” the provisions of the act. Courts would therefore look to the definition of “health” found in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton: “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age. . . . All these factors may relate to health.”
The WHPA manages to go beyond the extremism of Roe and Doe in many respects.
It would strike down laws requiring parental consent or parental notification before a minor has an abortion.
It would gut conscience protections by superseding federal and state laws that protect health-care workers from having to help perform abortions. The WHPA would be the first law that exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
It would protect sex-selective abortions — which usually target baby girls.
It could force states to provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions, and Democrats have already held votes in Congress making it clear they would enact separate legislation if needed to provide unlimited taxpayer funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients.
“We have passed that legislation,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the WHPA at her press conference on Friday. “To make it the law of the land, it is clear we just have to win a majority in November.” President Biden also repeated his commitment to codify Roe on Friday.
Every House Democrat except Henry Cuellar of Texas voted for the WHPA last year, and every Senate Democrat except Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted for it this year.
Senate Democrats fell two votes short of scrapping the filibuster in January. “Hopefully [we] get two more senators so we can change the obstacles to passing laws,” Pelosi said of the 60-vote Senate rule on Friday, making it plain that congressional Democrats are a House majority and two more Senate Democrats away from creating a right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states.