WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress, pressured to act quickly in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal abortion rights, plan to vote this week on legislation limiting access to abortions in the United States. post-Roe v. Wade era wants to preserve.
The bills are almost certain to fail in the evenly divided Senate, where broad Republican opposition means they can’t muster the 60 votes to move forward. But Democrats continue amid a tidal wave of pressure from progressives in their ranks who were outraged by the Supreme Court ruling and furious that their leaders seemed to have no plan to respond.
In the immediate aftermath of the decision last month who destroyed the nearly 50-year-old precedent that established abortion rights, such as protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court to demand action, House Democrats gathered on the steps of the Capitol across the street, chanting “God Bless America” to celebrate approval of a gun safety law†
The gesture was widespread mocked by activists on the leftwho denounced the lack of a convincing response from President Biden or Congress to a ruling that had been expected for weeks.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are now moving forward with a plan that aims to frame the issue ahead of the midterm elections. Lacking votes to force action, Democrats use debate to show voters where they stand and portray Republicans as out of step with a majority of Americans, who polls consistently show in favor have access to abortion.
The first measure, which President Nancy Pelosi plans to vote this week, would protect the right to travel for abortion services. A second measure, a version passed by the House last year, would explicitly give health care providers the right to provide abortion services and their patients the right to obtain them, invalidating a number of restrictions introduced in Roe’s aftermath.
Senate Democrats Tried and Failed in May adopt that legislation, the Women’s Health Protection Act. But Republicans and one Democrat — Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — opposed it, blocking debate and even shorting the simple majority to purge Congress.
House Democrats also plan to bring forward more legislation in the coming weeks that would protect the privacy of patients’ medical records, fearing law enforcement officers could try to use the data to track pregnancies and enforce abortion restrictions or bans. to force.
Maryland Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Majority Leader, said in a letter to colleagues that the leadership would look at more legislative steps “to respond to the Dobbs v. Jackson decision and protect the rights, health and safety of Americans under a court determined to ignore precedents and eager to legislate.”
Responding to pressure to respond more forcefully to the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Biden also responded on Friday: issued an executive order aimed at ensuring access to contraception and other health services for women. “A 10-year-old girl shouldn’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child,” Biden said, becoming visibly angry.
Read more about the end of Roe v. Wade
Following the president’s order, the Biden administration on Monday ordered hospitals, even in states where abortion is illegal, to federal law required doctors to perform abortions for a pregnant woman who showed up in the emergency department when they believed it was “the stabilizing treatment needed” to resolve a medical emergency.
“Under the law, wherever you live, women have the right to emergency care, including abortion care,” Biden’s secretary of health Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
Mr Becerra made his position known in a letter to healthcare providersgiving them official advice on their responsibilities under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, also known as EMTALA, a 1986 law that requires anyone who comes to an emergency department to be stabilized and treated, regardless of insurance status or health status. ability to pay.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats plan to debate measures that will preserve access to abortion as much as possible.
One bill sponsored by Texas Democrat Representative Lizzie Fletcher would prohibit any state from enacting or enforcing a law restricting travel to another state to obtain an abortion.
In Texas, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, about 1,400 women leave each month seeking abortion care, Ms Fletcher said. According to the organization, Planned Parenthood health centers in neighboring states have experienced a nearly 800 percent increase in the number of patients seeking abortions since Texas enacted the ban.
“We’re already hearing legislators in our state talking about preventing women from leaving the state to have abortions, and it’s not just Texas,” Ms. Fletcher said in an interview. “The idea that you can’t leave the state to get reproductive health care in a state where it’s legal makes this an essential place to start.”
However, the Senate remains the primary blocker to any legislative effort to codify Roe v. Wade into law. All but two Republicans in the chamber are against abortion rights, leaving little hope that a bill can move forward; with Mr Manchin also opposed, passage would be nearly impossible.
Aware of that reality, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, Sen. Chuck Schumer, has turned his attention to the confirmation of circuit judges, unwilling to use his remaining midterm exam speaking time on abortion-related bills that have no chance of entering. feed .
Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, who is a practicing Catholic, and Arizona Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema, have teamed up with Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the only two Republican proponents of abortion rights in the Senate, to pass legislation. that would codify the framework of Roe and related matters. But the Democrats rejected an alternative proposal, arguing that it was toothless and had no clear guidelines about what states could and could not do.
Seeking a way to channel the anger of many on the left, Senate Democrats plan to hold hearings in the coming weeks. Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has scheduled a hearing Tuesday on the legal ramifications of the Dobbs decision and “to examine the grim reality of a post-Roe America.” Witnesses include Dr. Colleen P. McNicholas, an abortion provider of Planned Parenthood in Missouri and Southern Illinois.
Senator Patty Murray, the chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has scheduled another hearing next week with abortion providers and doctors.
Many progressives say the wave of hearings and votes is coming too late.
“It’s inexcusable that Democratic leadership knew for months that this was coming and provoked such an anemic, butt-pointed response,” said Stephanie Taylor, a founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “It’s one thing not to show up in outrage to this kind of news; it’s another not to show up with a battle plan.”
Elected Democrats have also urged Mr. Biden to do more, including declaring a public health emergency to protect access to abortion for all Americans; directing federal agencies to increase drug abortion accessibility; providing travel and childcare vouchers for those seeking access to out-of-state abortion care; and using federal property to increase access to abortion.
Some lawmakers also want to focus on the Senate confirmation process for Supreme Court nominees, arguing that Dobbs’ decision has exposed how fractured it is. Representatives Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, called on Mr. Schumer to formally take a position on whether Judges Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch lied under oath during their confirmations, misleading senators by saying that Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey set a precedent and implying that they would not support invalidating them.
“We must call their actions for what they were before the moment passed,” Mr. Lieu and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the letter, “so that we can prevent such a mendacious denigration of our fundamental rights and the rule of law to never happen again.” .”
Stephanie Laic and Sheryl Gay Stolberg coverage from Washington.