A group of Senate Democrats reintroduced the Women’s Health Protection Act on Friday evening – legislation that aims to codify the Federal protection of abortion since the Supreme Court repealed a landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade.
The law, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), aims to “protect people’s ability to decide whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, and to protect the ability of health care providers to provide abortion services. .”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) and President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.), along with Baldwin and Blumenthal, led 45 other Democrats to introduce the WHPA on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.
“Republicans have caused a crisis — a nightmare for women, for patients, and for doctors — with a nonstop attack on every woman’s reproductive rights,” Murray said in a statement. “They have passed one extreme abortion ban after another, and having failed to convince Americans to buy into their extreme agenda, they are trying to force women across the country with threats, intimidation, and outrageous lawsuits.”
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, about a dozen states have banned abortion care, and dozens more are vulnerable to bans or impending bans — making the WHPA a key piece of legislation for Democrats who want to proactively protect abortion access.
The WHPA will provide critical protections against these state restrictions and medically unnecessary barriers, protect people’s ability to travel out of state for abortion care, and ensure that abortions later in pregnancy cannot be prohibited if the life or health of the pregnant person is in danger.
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But this is the third time in the past decade that Democratic leaders have reintroduced the Women’s Health Protection Act — and it’s likely to fail again, given the Republican majority in the House.
Bill, originally introduced in 2013, is introduced again in 2021 in response to Roe’s potential demise. WHPA passed in the House with historical support in September 2021, just weeks after Texas implemented a draconian measures prohibiting abortion at six weeks and deputizing private citizens to implement the new law. The bill died by filibuster in the Senate Last February and again in Maydays after the leak of the Supreme Court’s concept of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that ultimately led to the repeal of Roe.
WHPA failed to advance in the Senate last year even after Democrats killed the bill of legislative findings that reflect the intersection of racism, classism and misogyny in abortion restrictions – an effort to “attract the broadest support” from Democrats, Blumenthal told HuffPost Last May.
The 2023 version of the law also does not contain unrelated findings, which are often used to help establish the intent of a piece of legislation and can be shown later in the event of a court challenge.
“In many corners of America today, the far-right’s crusade to suppress the bodily autonomy of pregnant women is causing disproportionate harm to non-white communities as well as the LGBTQ+ community,” Schumer said in a statement. “This law enshrines in law that reproductive freedom and access to basic health care should be available to every American, not subject to the whims of extreme parties whose beliefs do not align with the majority of Americans.”