Associated Press
The Senate will vote next week on legislation that would codify abortion rights into federal law as Democrats mount their response to the Supreme Court’s leaked draft decision that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
The procedural vote, scheduled for Wednesday, will mostly be symbolic and once again show the limits of the Democratic majority in the 50-50 Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., does not have the necessary 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster and move ahead with the bill, which means the effort is certain to fail. But he said members of both parties need to go on record about where they stand.
“Next week’s vote will be one of the most important we ever take,” Schumer said Thursday. “Because it deals with one of the most personal and difficult decisions a woman ever has to make in her life.”
He insisted that bringing The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to the Senate floor, after a similar measure failed in February, is “not an abstract exercise.” The House passed legislation protecting abortion rights in September.
The Democratic leader is hoping to put every single member of his conference, as well as Republicans, on record on abortion rights as both parties deal with the political fallout from the leaked draft opinion that would overturn the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. A final ruling, in a case from Mississippi, is expected this summer.
Democratic leaders, lacking the support needed to change Senate rules and pass an abortion bill on a majority vote, have signaled they intend to take the fight to voters during the campaign leading to the November election. Schumer noted that Republicans have been working for decades to bring about the end of Roe v. Wade.
“Come next week, Senate Republicans will have to answer for everything they’ve done over the years to embolden the hard right’s hostility against a woman’s choice,” Schumer said. “The vote will tell next week, America will be watching.”
Republican lawmakers have long been laser-focused on the high court, installing conservative justices intent on revisiting abortion and other social issues, including three ushered to confirmation by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky during Donald Trump’s presidency to build the court’s solid 6-3 majority.
GOP lawmakers have focused their ire on the rare leak of the draft opinion, calling it a brazen attempt to pressure the justices into changing the ruling.
Urging the justices to stick to their process, McConnell promised that senators would “have their backs, no matter what.”
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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.
4 comments
The Truth
May 5, 2022 at 4:15 pm
Democrats will have to answer for a half century of barbarism, and explain why they struggle to make depravity law. Let’s not have any more of this “health care” nonsense. Let’s have the truth.
Royce
May 9, 2022 at 6:17 am
“Democrats will have to answer”
Don’t say things you won’t do or will do and won’t be able to handle lol
Harry kamalatoe
May 5, 2022 at 4:39 pm
The same party that demands that a woman has a right to choose to kill or give birth to a baby is the same party who cant even define what a woman is.
They stand on a festering heap of dead children proclaiming that they have the moral high ground because they advocate for a woman’s right to pick murdering their unborn baby as an alternative to picking any one of the many alternatives such as abstinence, contraception, or adoption. All while looking down on the people who advocate for individuals to live with the decisions they make as if we are somehow evil or lesser than for not wanting babies to be murdered…
This is the same party which proclaims they support women while allowing men into women only spaces. They are the same party who have spent the past 4 years telling us that men and women are completely interchangeable and that now men can in fact get pregnant.
Also a lot of current women sports records are held by men and the first female 4 star admiral is a man. Men have also taken the title for woman of the year and playboy bunny of the year at least once in the past decade…this is the democrat party in a nutshell.
Unrelated to women’s right but relevant to the conversation; pro choice policies has also directly lead to the reduction in the Black American population by over 30 million lives since 1972… and that is just the number of abortions. Just imagine the number of children and grand children that some of those black parents would have in 40 years. Black Americans only make up ~13% of the US population but if we didn’t have pro choice we would be well over than mark.
Real question; knowing that nearly half of all abortions take place in low income and black/brown communities… wouldn’t the racist republicans want MORE of them not less of them? And if the democrats really were the party of the minorities wouldn’t you think that they would want more births not less??
Go for
May 9, 2022 at 6:19 am
“As if we are somehow evil or lesser then”
You have been lesser then since that day after the theatre Republican lol
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