There have been been bills languishing in Congressional committee which would make the right to choose a matter of federal law for decades, but there has never been any action taken to advance these bills.
A cynic might conclude that the precarity of the Roe v. Wade decision has been used to create excuses for do-nothing Democrats to do nothing and for a vast not-for-profit infrastructure to raise funds based on this same precarity.
I'm sure that there are Democrats who will bleat about the filibuster, but forcing a vote, even in the Senate, has a very real political value.
Moving this discussion from the judicial sphere to the political sphere could be a very good thing.
Supporting abortion rights is good policy and good politics (abortion rights poll very well):
The Supreme Court’s decision to let an extreme Texas anti-abortion law stand has touched off yet another round of outraged tweets, press releases, and declarations insinuating that while the situation is awful and while the court needs to be overhauled, there is nothing that can be done right now to halt America’s inexorable lurch toward the Republic of Gilead.
This is, in a word, garbage — and it is garbage with a pernicious purpose.
Yes, America needs presidents who appoint more sane Supreme Court justices over the next few decades. And yes, the initiatives to expand the court and time-limit judicial terms are important over the long haul. But as Texas empowers anti-abortion activists to become bounty hunters, something can be done in the here and now.
Democrats in Washington control Congress and the White House, two branches of government that have the power to preempt not only the Texas law, but also stop any copycat anti-abortion laws that other Republican states now race to pass.
………
Of course, Biden campaigned on a promise to pass such a federal law — and the good news is that he and his Democratic colleagues in Congress remain in a position to actually make that happen. There is already legislation introduced in Congress to do this. It is called the Women’s Health Protection Act, it already has 48 sponsors in the Senate, and its core precepts are wildly popular according to survey data.
“[The bill] creates federal protections against state restrictions that fail to protect women’s health and intrude upon personal decision-making,” notes a description from the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “It promotes and protects a woman’s individual constitutional rights, no matter where she lives.”
This legislation would use federal authority to invalidate anti-abortion state laws. It makes clear no “state government shall enact or enforce any law, rule, regulation, standard, or other provision having the force and effect of law that conflicts with any provision of this act.”
And yet as Republican legislators in states across the country have been passing laws to try to restrict abortion, Democrats didn’t even introduce the latest version of this bill until June, even though there have been versions of it going back to at least 2013. And then, after Democrats finally introduced it again, the legislation has been languishing in a committee — all while Democrats have been raising money off their promises to protect a woman’s right to choose.
This bill doesn’t have to sit in a committee. Democrats can pass it — not next week, not next month, but today. Right now. And they could seek help from Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have both said they support Roe and who have both humiliated themselves by previously insisting that the Republican Supreme Court nominees they’ve approved would not overturn Roe.
The fact that this bill is not already on the path for a vote in the House is a measure of just how cynically the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has been exploiting this issue for short term political considerations.
There is no excuse not to do this beyond cowardice and careerism.
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