The Road To Gilead, Con't

Legislation passed y the House last November to legalize abortion healthcare services in all 50 states was of course killed in the Senate by Republicans, and of course, by Joe Manchin.

 

Republicans on Monday blocked the Senate from taking up sweeping abortion rights legislation as Democrats sought to put lawmakers on the record on the issue in advance of the midterm elections and a coming Supreme Court ruling on access to abortion.

Democrats fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to bring the Women’s Health Protection Act to the floor for consideration after the House last September passed it on a narrow party-line vote. One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, joined all Republicans in opposition to beginning debate on the measure.

Lawmakers said it was the first time that the Senate had voted on a separate bill to enact the constitutional protections of Roe v. Wade into law. The outcome was anticipated, but Democrats were determined to hold the vote as members of both parties draw battle lines over what is expected to be a major election-year issue. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court is set to rule later this year on a case that could undermine or overturn the landmark abortion decision.

“We want Americans to know where their legislators stand on this important issue,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democrat and a leading backer of the abortion rights bill.

The measure would codify in federal law abortion rights that have long been protected by the 1973 court ruling. It was pursued by Democrats and abortion rights groups as a way to counter the increasingly severe abortion restrictions being enacted at the state level as well as the prospect of a high court ruling upholding tough new abortion limits in Mississippi and leaving in place a Texas law that has severely limited abortion in that state.

“People are counting on the Senate to do what the Supreme Court will not,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

About two dozen states have readied legislation that would immediately restrict abortion rights if the court upholds the Mississippi law, which bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, about two months earlier than Roe and subsequent decisions allow.

During Supreme Court arguments in December, conservative justices indicated a willingness to scale back, if not undo, the federal abortion protections and leave most of the regulation up to individual states. Democrats say the measure is needed to guarantee that women around the nation have equal access to abortion and to prevent states from imposing restrictions that are not medically necessary as a way to unconstitutionally curtail abortion.

 

So, as with voting rights, Democrats both don't have the votes to change the filibuster, and don't have the then necessary 50 votes to pass the Senate anyway, thanks to the same Dems blocking filibuster reform.

 

By 4th of July, medically safe abortion procedures will be illegal in roughly half of the US. Your rights to your womb will depend entirely on where you live.

 

And I'm pretty sure a large enough percentage of women voters, especially white women, will not give a shit in November that Republicans will control Congress again. (We already know that the vast majority of men won't.) 

I just don't think either letting half the states ban abortion or banning it altogether in the country will create a enough of a backlash against GOP control. If that were true we'd be seeing signs of it now, but I guess joni Mitchell is right. Don't know what you've got til it's gone.