Speaking on the Democrat-sponsored pro-abortion bill scheduled for a vote in the Senate Wednesday, Republican Senator Ben Sasse slammed it as a radical measure that doesn’t reflect the consensus of the American people or scientific truths.
“Advocates for abortion on demand are doing a lot of fear-mongering. We’ve heard some bizarre speeches on the floor in the last couple days that are so disconnected from the reality of the text of the legislation that’s before us,” Sasse said. “So much of what they’re pushing is wildly out of touch with the public and wildly out of touch with modern science.”
The bill being debated in the chamber, the Women’s Health Protect Act, would codify the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v. Wade and make abortion legal nationwide throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Since last week’s leak of the draft Supreme Court majority opinion that would overturn Roe, deferring the abortion issue to state legislatures to regulate, Democrats have been scrambling to advance the WHPA to preempt what they expect to be an unfavorable final decision. The bill would also nullify nearly every existing and future state pro-life law, including those that require parental notification for abortions sought by young girls and those that prohibit sex-selective abortions.
“Most Americans believe that unborn lives deserve to be protected at some point during a pregnancy. It is deeply human and deeply compassionate to recognize the humanity of an unborn life,” Sasse said, noting that public opinion is not on the side of the sweeping federal abortion expansions Democrats are proposing.
“We already know that America’s abortion laws are far, far more permissive than Europe’s and on this subject, our laws have a lot more in common with human rights abusers China and North Korea than with anything in French law,” Sasse added. “The legislation before us today would make our laws even more extreme. Depending on how you count we have the fourth to seventh most extreme pro-abortion laws of any of the 200 nations on Earth.”
Democrats have abandoned the “safe, legal, and rare” platform, Sasse said, substituting it for abortion on demand across the entire fetal gestation period.”This is not your mom’s Democratic Party,” he noted.
He applauded the work of the pro-life movement, especially in his home state of Nebraska, which has provided help to distressed pregnant women and their babies through volunteer-based care centers and support networks, as well as by adopting children themselves.
“We don’t have the massive war chest, the army of lawyers, or fancy PR shops that Planned Parenthood does, but what we do have is truth and love,” he said.
But he urged Republicans to practice compassion when it comes to the very unique female experience that is pregnancy and the challenges it can present.
“The pro-life cause is not and can not ever primarily be about legislation or policy. The pro-life cause must start with active compassion for moms and babies, and especially women whose first thought upon learning they were pregnant was ‘I can’t do this,'” he implored.
While the WHPA passed in the House in September 2021, it is expected to fail in the evenly-split Senate as it lacks the support of key swing Democratic senator Joe Manchin. He and his moderate Democrat colleague Senator Kyrsten Sinema both recently doubled-down in refusing to kill the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to advance legislation in the Senate, in order to enact the WHPA. The Senate vote on the bill will be held Wednesday evening.
“Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification. It’s an expansion. It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion,” Manchin told reporters Wednesday ahead of his anticipated “no” vote.