U.S. Senate to Vote on Extreme Abortion Bill Pennsylvania ‘Pro-Life’ Democrat Says He Will Vote to Debate
February 26, 2022 | Pennsylvania
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has scheduled a vote on legislation that would embed abortion on demand, at any time during pregnancy, into federal law, making invalid many individual state pro-life laws.
The Senate will vote on February 28 on the abortion lobby’s Women’s Health Protection Act (S. 1975), sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and self-described “pro-life” Senator Bob Casey Jr., (D-PA) has said he will vote for debate on the bill.The House narrowly passed the measure, by a vote of 218-211, in September, along party lines, with only Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28) joining Republicans to vote against it. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in December not to block the Texas Heartbeat Act, the White House called for a Senate vote on the WHPA abortion legislation.
In an op-ed at The Hill in December, Jonathan Turley, public interest law professor at George Washington University, explained the White House push for a vote before the Court rules in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case centered on a Mississippi law that bans abortions past 15 weeks, and one that poses the most significant challenge in decades to the right to abortion created by the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade:
The reason is that the WHPA is not a simple codification but a potentially massive expansion of Roe and its successor case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. It seeks to accomplish legislatively what could not be accomplished judicially for decades. Putting aside possible constitutional problems in effectively taking over the entire field of abortion rights from the states, the WHPA’s provisions read like a progressive wish-list based on pages of legislative “findings.” It declares the “violent legacy” of “restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion … [that] perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism.”
The legislation, Turley summarized, “actually goes far beyond the current precedent of the Supreme Court and would effectively wipe out many state laws and state authority on abortion.”.. (Excerpt from the Virginia Star)
