Senate Republicans, anticipating the end of Roe v Wade by July 4th, want to introduce a national abortion ban to help them win Congress back in November.
Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.
The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.
The discussions reflect what activists describe as an emerging consensus in some corners of the antiabortion movement to push for hard-line measures that will truly end a practice they see as murder while rejecting any proposals seen as half-measures.
Activists say their confidence stems from progress on two fronts: At the Supreme Court, a conservative majority appears ready to weaken or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that has protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years. And activists argue that in Texas, Republicans have paid no apparent political price for banning abortion after cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.
While a number of states have recently approved laws to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy — the limit established in the Mississippi legislation at the heart of the case pending before the high court — some activists and Republican lawmakers now say those laws are not ambitious enough for the next phase of the antiabortion movement. Instead, they now see the six-week limit — which they call “heartbeat” legislation — as the preferred strategy because it would prevent far more abortions.
“This is a whole new ballgame,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, one of the country’s biggest antiabortion groups, said in an interview. “The 50 years of standing at the Supreme Court’s door waiting for something to happen is over.”
A group of Republican senators has discussed at multiple meetings the possibility of banning abortion at around six weeks, said Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who was in attendance and said he would support the legislation. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will introduce the legislation in the Senate, according to an antiabortion advocate with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. Ernst did not respond to a request for comment.
One top advocate, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List, has spoken privately with 10 possible Republican presidential contenders, including former president Donald Trump, to talk through national antiabortion strategy. Most of them, she said in an interview, assured her they would be supportive of a national ban and would be eager to make that policy a centerpiece of a presidential campaign.
And Students for Life Action, along with nine other prominent antiabortion groups, plans to send a letter to every Republican member of Congress on Monday pushing them to embrace a “heartbeat bill.” The letter, which the group shared with The Washington Post, argues that a national 15-week ban would not go far enough.
“If we are not focusing on limiting early abortions, we are not really addressing the violence of abortion at all,” Hawkins writes.
That's the bad news. The good news is we have time to change course:
A nationwide abortion ban would be extraordinarily difficult to pass, particularly given the need for 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster under current rules. Such a measure would encounter resistance from nearly all Democrats in addition to a handful of Republicans, who might raise questions about its constitutionality. The Senate is split 50-50, but with a handful of competitive races this year, neither party is expected to attain a filibuster-proof majority.
A strict national ban is also likely to be impossible without an antiabortion Republican president willing to sign it.
Moreover, picking such a fight could ignite liberal activists who would be energized to push back against the prospect of abortion being banned not just in red-state America but Democratic bastions from California to New York. The early years of the Trump administration prompted huge protests, starting with the first Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 — though it remains unclear whether a rollback of Roe would reignite that energy.
The possibility of a nationwide ban is “terrifying,” said Kelley Robinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, adding that the proposal would be a major motivator for Democrats in the midterm elections.
“By them saying out loud that their goal is to push a nationwide abortion ban, it makes it clear that we have to elect more pro-reproductive health champions on the national level and in the states,” she said.
If the very real prospect of SCOTUS striking down Roe/Casey in an election year and making it clear Republicans want to end abortion for everyone doesn't rally Democratic support in November, then we're as good as toast anyway.
The nightmare scenario then becomes a GOP congress where Mitch McConnell eliminates the filibuster completely, passes the ban in the House and Senate, and then attaches it to must-pass legislation so Biden will have to choose to either ban abortion nationwide or shut down the government next year.
They won't have to wait for 2025, in other words.
You can see Gilead in the distance now, and it's getting much closer.
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