(Bloomberg) — Senate Democrats were blocked in their attempt to enshrine abortion rights in federal law in a vote that highlighted both the deep divide on the politically explosive issue and the party’s schism over ending the filibuster to achieve their goals.
All Senate Republicans and one Democrat — Joe Manchin of West Virginia — voted to keep legislation ensuring nationwide access to abortions from reaching the Senate floor. The 49-51 vote was well below the 60 votes needed.
With the Supreme Court poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he aimed to put all the chamber’s Republicans on record at a time when polls continue to show most voters want Roe to remain intact.
“Republicans are going to have to go on record as to whether they want this to be the first generation of American women with less freedom than their mothers,” Washington Senator Patty Murray, a member of Schumer’s leadership team, said.
Schumer set the vote as a signal to the Democratic Party’s core voters, who largely support abortion rights and could be motivated to turn out for the midterm election that will decide control of Congress for the remainder of President Joe Biden’s first term. In a sign of how important the issue is for the party, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the vote in her role as president of the Senate. And before the procedural vote, dozens of progressive House Democrats and aides marched across the Capitol before the vote to demand senators bring legislation to the floor.
Biden, in a statement after the bill was blocked, made a direct appeal to voters, asking them to elect more senators who will back abortion rights.
“If they do, Congress can pass this bill in January, and put it on my desk, so I can sign it into law,” he said, making an argument that was echoed by Schumer and other Democrats.
But the abortion issue also animates the GOP base, and Republican senators have branded the Democratic legislation as radical and extreme.
“This extreme legislation would invalidate all state laws that limit abortions after 20 weeks of gestation,” Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said. “This wouldn’t just impact pro-life red states. This change is so radical that it would invalidate existing laws in blue states as well.”
The legislation at issue, introduced by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, would establish a federal statutory right for doctors to provide abortion services and for patients to choose to have the procedure, without limitations or requirements such as specific tests or other medical procedures unless they’re required for comparable procedures. Health providers could sue on behalf of their staffs or patients if there are any violations. It is backed by the Biden administration.
“Americans strongly oppose getting rid of Roe, and they will be paying close attention from now until November to Republicans who are responsible for its demise,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who has been opposed to abortion, announced his support for it on Monday. Two Republicans who have backed abortion rights in the past — Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Maine — drafted a more limited bill codifying existing court rulings and didn’t support the Democratic measure. Manchin opposed the Democratic bill, but indicated he would have supported the Collins and Murkowski bill had it been put on the floor.
Democrats’ inability to move the abortion legislation for a second time this year — after being stifled on voting rights, policing reform, an immigration overhaul and other matters — has again highlighted the limits of their wafer-thin majority and the rancor within the party over doing away with the filibuster. Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, two pivotal Democratic votes, oppose ending the rule.
In January, after a bid to push voting rights legislation was blocked in the Senate, Schumer tried to change Senate rules to end the legislative filibuster and allow it to pass on a simple majority vote. That was rejected 52-48 with Manchin and Sinema, who both backed the legislation, joining Republicans in preserving the 60-vote threshold to advance it. Schumer has given no indication that he will try again to hold a vote on the filibuster.
Sinema, who supports abortion rights, has particularly come under fire from fellow Democrats for her stance. After last week’s leak of a draft Supreme Court majority opinion indicating Roe would be overturned, two progressives — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders — urged the party to put up a primary challenger to Sinema when she’s up for re-election in 2024 because of her opposition to getting rid of the filibuster.
Sinema, who was censured by Arizona Democrats in January, has repeatedly said the filibuster is necessary to protect Democratic priorities should Republicans take control of Congress.
“Protections in the Senate safeguarding against the erosion of women’s access to health care have been used half-a-dozen times in the past ten years, and are more important now than ever,” she said in a statement last week.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell this week vowed that he wouldn’t back any effort to gut the filibuster rule to pass a national abortion ban if Republicans take control next year. But he also told USA Today late last week that a national abortion ban is “possible” if Roe is overturned.
There is wide distrust among Democrats.
“Mitch McConnell has said the doors are open for Congress to ban abortion all across the country,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said. “Mitch McConnell has delivered in the past. And I very much fear if he gets the chance he’ll deliver in the future.”
(Updates with Biden statement in sixth, seventh paragraph)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
