U.S. Senate Refuses to Advance Radical Abortion Bill for the Second Time

The United States Senate has rejected an attempt to impose on the nation the most radical abortion regime the country has ever considered – far beyond even the damage that Roe v. Wade has wrought.

With 60 votes necessary to advance the sweeping abortion bill known as the Women’s Health Protection Act  (WHPA) to a final vote, only 49 senators voted in favor of the motion to do so on Wednesday, May 11.

In the equally divided Senate, only Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., crossed party lines to join Republicans, all of whom voted “no” on the motion.

Most considered the effort by Democrats to bring back the WHPA to be a futile one, since the bill, already passed in the House, had failed once before in a Senate vote held on February 28, by a vote of 46 – 48.

Senate Majority Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., brought the bill back for a second attempt in response to a draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in the highly anticipated Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case leaked to Politico, which reported on the draft on May 2.

Schumer said the second vote was for the purpose of showing Americans “where every single U.S. senator stands” on the issue of abortion, perhaps thinking he could pressure some senators to change their vote from their previous one.

The effort failed miserably.

But the WHPA, which has been touted as “codifying Roe,” is much worse than even that shorthand term implies.

While Roe permitted legislation such as the Partial Birth Abortion Act and parental notice, informed consent, waiting periods and other types of regulations, the WHPA would, according to the Heritage Foundation, “prohibit any government anywhere from doing anything that could, even potentially, reduce the number of abortions.”

It would be the most extreme enshrinement of abortion into American law in its history.

Schumer called the vote one of the “most important” senators would take “in this century.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed a different opinion.

“It would overturn modest and overwhelmingly popular safeguards like waiting periods, informed consent laws and possibly even parental notification,” McConnell said.

The bill also failed to win over pro-abortion Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who voted against advancing the bill.

The Supreme Court is expected to release its official opinion in the Dobbs case sometime before the end of June.

Photo from Shutterstock.