On Thursday, Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona reiterated their commitment to keeping the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle for legislation after President Biden called for a carve-out from the rule in order to pass a federal abortion law.
"Senator Manchin's position has not changed" on relaxing the filibuster rule in any way, a spokesman for the senator told Reuters.
— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) June 30, 2022
Sinema stands by her opposition to gutting the 60-vote threshold despite Biden’s call for a carveout on abortion rights. Her office points to this op-ed: “And, sometimes, the filibuster … is needed to protect against attacks on women’s health” https://t.co/adP0ioNwfJ
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 30, 2022
Sinema is right that in the long run nuking the filibuster could backfire on advocates of a right to abortion. As I wrote last year:
For the foreseeable future, I think there’s almost no chance that Senate Republicans would be the ones to abolish the filibuster. The current terms of GOP senators Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, and Ben Sasse end in 2027. McConnell is never going to strike first at the legislative filibuster. Collins supports a right to abortion. Sasse, a staunch pro-lifer, has explicitly warned that abolishing the filibuster would cause wild national policy swings on many issues, including abortion.
While it’s almost unthinkable that Senate Republicans would nuke the legislative filibuster anytime soon, if Democrats do it, then we know that Republicans would indeed try to enact some national limit on abortion if the GOP holds the trifecta. But it’s not clear exactly where they would try to draw a line at first.
Since 2013, House and Senate Republicans have voted almost unanimously for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would establish a 20-week nationwide limit on abortion. . . .
For pro-lifers who believe that federal legislation protecting the lives of unborn babies is authorized by the 14th Amendment or the commerce clause (or both), the only real restraint on federal legislation would be political prudence, of course. Marjorie Dannenfelser of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List told The New Yorker: “I think a fifteen-week limit could pass Congress in a couple of years. Of course, we need a President and majorities in both houses, which we don’t have, but that I see as a reasonable goal.”